SULAIBIYAH, Kuwait, 6 February 2005 — Five terrorists holed up at a house in Kuwait surrendered to police yesterday after authorities sealed off the area.
Kuwait Television quoted an Interior Ministry statement as saying the five were two Saudis and three Jordanians wanted by authorities. They surrendered after little resistance in Sulaibiyah, a mainly Bedouin area about 20 km west of Kuwait City and a security official was quoted by state-run TV as saying the operation was over.
Sporadic small-arms fire was heard late into the evening as a police helicopter hovered overhead, shining its spotlight onto streets while crowds gathered at street corners.
Kuwaiti TV said police were “combing the area” to ensure nobody has escaped. Footage showed a row of small, low-income houses with police vehicles parked near them.
This is the fifth confrontation this year between police and Al-Qaeda-influenced extremists accused of planning to attack Americans and Kuwaiti security forces.
The surrenders followed the burial yesterday of 1st Lt. Hamad Majed Al-Samhan, who died from wounds sustained in a Jan. 31 shootout between police and wanted terrorists, the latest deadly clash with police clamping down on terrorists.
Al-Samhan was the fourth policeman to lose his life during last month’s unprecedented crackdown on terrorists in Kuwait, a close US ally bordering Saudi Arabia.
Many militants oppose the presence of thousands of US troops in the country.
Interior Minister Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, who attended Al-Samhan’s funeral, told lawmakers this week during a closed-door meeting that police had killed eight terrorists and detained 14 others, including the ring leader, in several police raids and four shootouts in different parts of the country.
Two militants remain at large, the minister said, but it was unclear if they were among the five who surrendered yesterday.
Al-Qaeda’s spokesman, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, was stripped of his Kuwaiti citizenship following Al-Qaeda’s Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.
The Al-Qabas daily reported yesterday that terrorists had plotted to kidnap and execute US soldiers and Westerners. Nasser Khlaif Al-Enezi, a senior member of the group who was killed Jan. 30, “plotted to kidnap US soldiers and Western civilians and execute them and film the process,” his brother Amer, the alleged leader of the group, told interrogators, Al-Qabas said.
Amer said his brother received training on such operations while he was in Iraq fighting US-led coalition troops, the paper said, quoting sources close to the investigation.
Nasser also received instructions from “armed terrorist groups” in Iraq to attack US military convoys on their way to Iraq from bases in Kuwait in a bid to obstruct supplies headed for Baghdad, the daily said.
The alleged executions were to have taken place at a house in Umm Al-Haiman, south of the capital, which is close to the largest US military base at Arifjan and also near US supply lines.
Security forces raided the house on Jan. 15, killing a Saudi militant and arresting three other militants while an unspecified number fled.
The government told Parliament that documents seized from the group showed the terrorists plotted attacks on US military convoys, Western civilian targets and the headquarters of the State Security Agency.
Security for US military convoys, using the emirate as a passage to neighboring Iraq, has been boosted with more Kuwaiti police cars accompanying the convoys. Traffic is stopped on some occasions.
