Kuwaiti police arrest alleged terror boss
KUWAIT CITY – Police burst into suspected terrorist hideouts throughout a tranquil suburb Monday, arresting a reputed terror boss and setting off a ferocious gunbattle that killed at least four of his followers and a bystander.
The raid – the fourth in three weeks – reflected a new sense of urgency in the battle to crush Islamic extremists deeply opposed to the presence of U.S. forces in this oil-rich emirate.
Kuwait’s prime minister, Sheik Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah, called for the “uprooting of this phenomenon and the removal of this cancer before it spreads,” Faisal al-Hajji, the acting information minister, told the state-owned Kuwait News Agency on Monday.
Kuwait beefed up security in late December around vital infrastructure, including oil installations, following terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia, and soon after the government began conducting raids against suspected militants.
The first two, on Jan. 10 and Jan. 15, sparked clashes that killed two suspects and two police officers. On Sunday, security forces fought with militants in a residential district of Kuwait City in violence that killed three – a militant, a police officer, and a bystander.
Until this month, militants had only struck at U.S. military targets, and the spilling of Kuwaiti blood deeply upset many here. Concerned citizens soon began tipping off police to hidden caches of weapons and explosives, authorities said.
In Monday’s raid, which Interior Ministry spokesman Lt. Col. Adel al-Hashshash called a “spectacular success,” police arrested six suspected militants, including alleged ringleader Amer Khlaif al-Enezi. The government said four militants and a bystander were killed, but Kuwait TV reported Monday night that one of the arrested militants, who was wounded in the fighting, had died. It was not known if any suspected insurgents escaped.
The government provided little information on al-Enezi, but a resident of the tribal city of al-Jahra told the Associated Press that he used to preach at a local mosque, exhorting young men to attack Americans, Kuwaiti security forces and even moderate Muslim clerics.
The resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the preacher, in his 30s, was fired more than six months ago.
The interior minister, Sheik Nawwaf Al Ahmed Al Sabah, said the suspects targeted Monday were part of “an organized terror group,” but said their aims and their backers would only be revealed by investigations. Sheik Salem Al Ali Al Sabah, the head of Kuwait’s National Guard, has previously linked some local militants to al Qaeda.
The fighting early Monday began when police chased militants from scattered hideouts in Mubarak Al Kabir, a middle-class residential neighborhood south of Kuwait City, according to a police statement. The fighters took refuge in a house and a gunbattle broke out, police said.