U.S. soldier detained in base attack

KUWAIT CITY -- A command tent at the 101st Airborne Division camp in Kuwait was attacked early Sunday with grenades, and 14 soldiers were wounded, four seriously, military officials said. An American soldier was detained as a suspect, the Army said.

The soldier, who was found hiding in a bunker, is assigned to the 101st Airborne, military officials said. The motive in the attack "most likely was resentment," said Max Blumenfeld, a U.S. Army spokesman. He did not elaborate.

Ten of those wounded had superficial wounds, including puncture wounds to their arms and legs from fragments of the grenade, said George Heath, civilian spokesman for the 101st's home base at Fort Campbell, Ky.

Helicopters evacuated 11 to Army hospitals, Blumenfeld said.

The attack at 1:30 a.m. (5:30 p.m. EST Saturday) apparently used only grenades. It took place in the command center of the 101st Division's 1st Brigade at Camp Pennsylvania, Blumenfeld said. The command tent, the tactical operations center, runs 24 hours a day and would always be staffed by officers and senior enlisted personnel, Blumenfeld said.

Names of the wounded were not released, and Blumenfeld did not say if any high-ranking officers were hurt.

The suspect is an engineer from the engineer platoon that was attached to one of the infantry battalions, said Col. Frederick B. Hodges, the 1st Brigade's commander.

The suspect, whose name was not released, has not been charged, Blumenfeld said. Investigators do not yet know if others were involved, Blumenfeld said.

However, Heath said two Middle Eastern men were detained. He said they had been hired as contractors working for the Army at that camp.

Earlier, Heath said the attack appeared to have been carried out by terrorists. Military officials had said the attacker used two grenades and small-arms fire.

Camp Pennsylvania is a rear base camp of the 101st, near the Iraqi border. Kuwait is the main launching point for the tens of thousands of ground forces -- including parts of the 101st -- who have entered Iraq.

Near Camp New York, another encampment in Kuwait, a Patriot missile hit an incoming missile near, a military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. There were no reports of injuries or where debris from the missile might have landed. Camp New York, which is near Camp Pennsylvania, was the largest of the desert staging camps.

Jim Lacey, a correspondent for Time magazine, told CNN that he was about 20 yards away when explosions at Camp Pennsylvania went off at what he said were two tents that housed division leadership.

"The people who did it ran off into the darkness," he said.

He said he interviewed an Army major who was sitting outside the tent. "He said he saw the grenade roll by him," Lacey said.

After the attack, troops fanned out around the compound to find the perpetrators, Lacey said.

"When this all happened we tried to get accountability for everybody," Hodges told Britain's Sky News television. "We noticed four hand grenades were missing and that this sergeant was unaccounted for. We started looking for him and found him hiding here in one of these bunkers. He is detained and he is being interrogated right now."

The 101st Airborne is a rapid deployment group trained to go anywhere in the world within 36 hours. The roughly 22,000 members of the 101st were deployed Feb. 6. The last time the entire division was deployed was during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which began after Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait.

Most recently, it hunted suspected Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in the mountains of Afghanistan. Its exploits are followed in Kentucky with much pride.

News of the attack at the camp compounded the anxiety of relatives of the division's soldiers.

"I get a little worried but when I think I should be crying, I'm not," said Chelsey Payne of Clarksville, Tenn., whose husband, Sgt. Robert Payne, is with the division. "I just don't get scared about my own husband, I just know that he's a good soldier and he's coming home. He promised me."

Kuwait is the main launching point for the tens of thousands of ground forces who have entered Iraq. Before the war with Iraq broke out, Americans had come under attack four times in the oil-rich emirate since October. Three of the attacks were blamed on Muslim extremists.