Author: The Associated Press
Publication: The New York Times
Date: March 23, 2003
URL: http://nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-War-Kuwait-Attack.html
Grenades exploded at a 101st Airborne
command center in Kuwait early Sunday, killing one and wounding 13 servicemen,
and a U.S. soldier was detained as a suspect in the attack, the Army said.
Three others who sustained serious
injuries were undergoing surgery, the military said.
The attacker threw three grenades
into three tents, including the command tent, military officials said.
The motive in the attack ``most likely was resentment,'' said Max Blumenfeld,
a U.S. Army spokesman. He did not elaborate.
The name of the soldier who died
was not released because family members had not been notified, said George
Heath, civilian spokesman for Fort Campbell, Ky., the storied 101st Airborne
Division's home base.
``Incidents of this nature are abnormalities
throughout the Army, specifically in the 101st,'' Heath said. ``Death is
a tragic incident regardless of how it comes, but when it comes from a
fellow comrade, it does even more to hurt morale. Our hearts and prayers
go out to the families of the soldier. We pray that incidents of this nature
do not happen again in any military organization.''
The suspect, found hiding in a bunker,
is an engineer from an engineering platoon in the 101st Airborne, said
Col. Frederick B. Hodges, commander of the division's 1st Brigade.
The attack in the command center
of the 101st Division's 1st Brigade at Camp Pennsylvania happened at 1:30
a.m. (5:30 p.m. EST Saturday) and apparently involved only grenades, Blumenfeld
said.
One of the grenades went off in
the command tent, he said. The tent, the tactical operations center, runs
24 hours a day and would always be staffed by officers and senior enlisted
personnel, Blumenfeld said.
Ten of those wounded had superficial
wounds, including puncture wounds to their arms and legs from fragments
of the grenade, Heath said.
Helicopters evacuated 11 to Army
hospitals, Blumenfeld said.
Names of the wounded were not released,
and Blumenfeld did not say if any high-ranking officers were hurt.
Hodges said he was asleep when a
sergeant woke him up.
``I immediately smelled smoke,''
the commander told Britain's Sky News television. ``I heard a couple of
explosions and then a popping sound which I think was probably a rifle
being fired. It looks like some assailant threw a grenade into each of
these three tents here.''
The suspect, whose name was not
released, has not been charged, Blumenfeld said, adding that investigators
did not know if others were involved.
Two Middle Eastern men who had been
hired as contractors were detained and later released, Heath said.
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, 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 Sky News. ``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.