Wed Oct 9, 7:33 PM ET

By Ashraf Fouad

KUWAIT (Reuters) - Kuwait has arrested up to 50 people suspected of helping two Kuwaitis to kill a U.S. Marine and wound another in what the government said was a "terrorist attack."

U.S. defense officials, who asked not to be identified, said the Kuwaitis who staged the attack on Tuesday had attended training camps in Afghanistan (news - web sites) run by Saudi-born fugitive Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al Qaeda network.

"We believe there is a terrorist link here," one said.

In another incident on Wednesday, a U.S. soldier fired a single bullet at a car, apparently believing he was under threat as troops moved to a desert training area near the Iraq border, a U.S. military spokesman said.

The military provided no details of the incident on a highway in northern Kuwait, but a Western source later told Reuters: "A car filled with guys approached the Americans and harassed them. There was firing but we are not sure if the civilian vehicle also fired or not."

The two attackers, killed by the Marines on a Kuwaiti island, were buried on Wednesday in what witnesses said turned into an anti-Western rally amid chants of "Allahu Akbar," or God is Greatest.

Kuwait is currently holding "between 40 and 50 people as suspects and witnesses as part of the investigation," a Kuwait security source told Reuters.

He said the attackers were known to authorities as Islamic activists who had been questioned about visits to Afghanistan.

U.S. HAS 10,000 TROOPS IN KUWAIT

The United States has about 10,000 troops in Kuwait, including ground forces training in the desert, Marines training in the northern Gulf and Air Force troops engaged in enforcing a no-fly zone over southern Iraq with U.S. warplanes deployed at Kuwaiti bases.

Some 450 British soldiers and eight Tornado warplanes are based in Kuwait as part of the no-fly zone operation.

The Pentagon (news - web sites) identified the Marine killed on Tuesday as Lance-Corporal Antonio Sledd, 20, of Hillsborough, Florida.

Kuwait named the dead attackers as cousins Anas Ahmad Ibrahim Abdel-Rehim al-Kandari, born in 1981, and Jassem Hamad Mubarak Salem al-Hajri, born in 1976.

Abdullah al-Kandari, the brother of attacker Anas Kandari, told Reuters he was not aware if Anas was linked to al Qaeda, but he had asked to be buried as a "martyr."

He said Anas was angered by scenes on television of what he called Israeli "massacres" of Palestinians and in recent days had vowed to kill those who were killing Palestinian Muslims.

Writer Mohammad al-Mulafi, who attended the burial of the two Kuwaitis, said a clergyman addressing hundreds of mourners had said: "The Jews and Christians must exit from the peninsula of the Arabs." The clergyman also said "what the attackers did was their duty."

Such scenes are rare in Kuwait, which remains officially grateful to the United States and its Western allies for leading the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites) that ended a seven-month Iraqi occupation.

-- Anonymous, October 09, 2002