Kuwait dismisses group claiming responsibility for shooting

KUWAIT CITY -- Kuwait's government said Wednesday it doubts the existence of a group which claimed responsibility for a fatal shooting attack on Americans and said it follows Osama bin Laden.

The group, calling itself Dawa and Jihad, told an Arab newspaper Tuesday it was behind the Jan. 21 gun ambush on two American citizens working for the U.S. military in Kuwait, which killed one man and injured the other.

Defense Minister Sheik Jaber Mubarak Al Sabah said he didn't think the group was "real," because it had never been heard of before and its only communication was via the Internet.

"I believe that anyone who attacks the allies wants the Iraqi army to be here instead of them, and this is what we will never accept," he added.

The attack was just the latest against Americans in recent months in Kuwait, where pro-American feeling is strong after the 1991 Gulf War expelled Iraqi invaders.

Kuwaiti officials have described the attacks as isolated incidents, distancing their country from any deep connection to al-Qaida or other terrorist activities.

Fouad al-Hashem, a columnist for the Al-Watan newspaper, wrote last week that the latest shooting had to have been carried out by "Iraqi intelligence agents," or Kuwaitis brainwashed by bin Laden.

There was no way to verify the authenticity of the group or its claim, which was e-mailed to the London-based pan-Arab daily newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat.

The e-mail said Dawa and Jihad carried out the attack to protest "American colonialism" and "the use of our lands to strike at Muslims in Iraq and before that in Afghanistan."

A person who claimed to be the group's leader told the newspaper in an Internet interview Tuesday that Dawa and Jihad "operates under the banner of Osama bin Laden."

On Wednesday, the purported leader identified the shooter as Abu Hotheifa al-Kuwaiti.

But Kuwaiti officials say a 25-year-old Kuwaiti in custody, whom they identified as Sami al-Mutairi, confessed to the shooting.

The shooting was the third attack on Americans since October. The earlier attacks killed a U.S. Marine and injured a Marine and two soldiers. Kuwaiti Muslim extremists are suspected in those attacks.

Some 20,000 U.S. military personnel are in this oil-rich state, part of a massive buildup in the area to prepare for a possible war on Iraq over its alleged weapons of mass destruction.