KUWAIT CITY (Reuters) – Suspected Islamic State militants arrested in Kuwait and the Philippines were planning to carry out bombings against U.S. military forces in Kuwait, the Gulf country’s al-Rai newspaper reported on Monday.
The suspects were also plotting a suicide attack on a Hussainiya, or Shi’ite Muslim meeting hall, said al-Rai, which has close ties to the security services.
Philippine security forces arrested a Kuwaiti and a Syrian for suspected links to Islamic State on March 25, three months after they arrived in Manila.
Al-Rai said Kuwaiti security forces also arrested a Syrian chemistry teacher suspected of involvement with the plots.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait referred queries to Kuwaiti authorities. Kuwaiti security officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kuwait, home to several U.S. military bases, suffered its deadliest militant attack in decades when a Saudi suicide bomber blew himself up inside a packed Shi’ite mosque in June 2015, killing 27 people. Islamic State claimed responsibility.
(Reporting by Ahmed Hagagy Writing by Katie Paul; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
Kuwaiti intelligence officers have broken up a terrorist cell with connections to both Iran and Hezbollah.
The statement from the country’s interior ministry says three Kuwaiti nationals are under arrest and the search is ongoing for three others suspected as part of the cell.
Security officials say the men have connections to both Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Lebanon’s Hezbollah terrorist network. The police found the men with a large cache of weapons and explosives hidden in an underground bunker area located on a farm.
Police reported finding 204 hand grenades, 65 guns, 56 rocket-propelled grenades and 317 pounds of bomb-making material.
The report also stated that three of the cell members were divers who smuggled explosives but also tracked the movements of ships around the nation.
The arrests marked the second straight month of breaking terror cells. Last month, Kuwaiti terror forces broke apart an ISIS related group.
British authorities have determined the identity of the masked ISIS member who has beheaded several captives in online videos.
The terrorist has been identified as Mohammed Emwazi, in his mid to late 20s and crossed into Syria sometime during 2012. Emwazi was born in Kuwait but grew up with a wealthy family in West London and obtained a college degree in computer programming. After graduating from college, he became more radicalized and left to join jihad.
British officials are admitting they had been watching Emwazi for at least five years after returning from a job with a computer company in Kuwait. He was imprisoned by British officials when he returned to the country.
“I had a job waiting for me and marriage to get started,” the BBC reports Emwazi as writing in a June 2010 email. “[But now] I feel like a prisoner, only not in a cage, in London, a person imprisoned and controlled by security service men, stopping me from living my new life in my birthplace and country, Kuwait.”
He escaped to Syria in 2012.
Prime Minister David Cameron declined to comment on the identity of the terrorist.
The royal family of Saudi Arabia is taking pro-active steps to fight the Islamic terrorist group ISIS by building a 600-mile long wall to block the Iraq/Saudi border.
The fence will run from Jordan to Kuwait. The fencing system will five layers of barbed wire fencing, a ditch, a patrol road, underground motion sensors, 40 watchtowers, radar, day/night cameras and rapid intervention teams.
The entire system will also be connected through a fiber-optic network.
The royal family had first thought about a wall in 2006 during the U.S. invasion of Iraq but put the plan in motion after ISIS tried to sneak into the country through the border town of Arar.
The Saudi military has already sent 30,000 additional troops to the border to secure it.
ISIS top leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has called on Sunnis within Saudi Arabia to being terrorist attacks on the royal family.
