KUWAIT CITY, Jan 17 (AFP) - Kuwaiti security forces have arrested at least 10 suspects, including Saudi nationals, after the latest clashes between police and Islamist militants, the interior minister said Monday as a top military official linked the unrest to Al-Qaeda.
"In the two incidents between 10 and 15 people, Kuwaitis and Saudis, were arrested," Sheikh Nawaf al-Ahmad al-Sabah told reporters after briefing a parliamentary committee on the security situation.
A Saudi gunman was killed and two Kuwaiti security officers were wounded in a shootout Saturday, which came after two policemen were killed in clashes with gunmen in a Kuwait City suburb on January 10.
An interior ministry spokesman in Riyadh said Saudi authorities last week arrested a Saudi national suspected of links to the deadly shootout.
Kuwait's interior minister said there was close security coordination with authorities in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, which has been rocked by a spate of terror attacks by suspected Al-Qaeda extremists since May 2003.
The interior ministry said security forces had recovered 349 hand grenades and 349 detonators buried near a deserted garden in Sabahiya district, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of Kuwait City.
The find came in a major raid by special forces carried out in response to a tip-off from suspects in custody, the ministry said.
Sheikh Nawaf said those involved in the clashes belonged to a terrorist organization but added that it was too early to say if they had foreign links.
"Yes they have an organization ... They have arms and maps ... The group is organized," said Sheikh Nawaf, adding that investigations were continuing to establish if they were linked to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.
But the commander of Kuwait's National Guard Sheikh Salem al-Ali al-Sabah told the Saudi daily Okaz that the suspects were members of Al-Qaeda who had plotted to carry out terrorist attacks in the emirate.
"The plots, targeting state security agency headquarters and oil facilities, were planned by a terrorist group that belongs to the Al-Qaeda network. Its leader and two of its members, all Kuwaitis, were arrested," said Sheikh Salem.
The arrests enabled security forces to bust a terrorist cell in Umm Al-Haiman district on Saturday and recover large quantities of arms, ammunition and explosives, he said.
The suspects plotted a wave of car bombings, he added.
Security forces also recovered a recording of a long telephone conversation between one of the detained suspects and Al-Qaeda spokesman Suleiman Abu Ghaith, whose Kuwaiti citizenship was withdrawn in 2001, he said.
Sheikh Salem said security forces were hunting 15 suspected Islamist militants who fled following the two gunbattles in Hawalli and Umm Al-Haiman.
Security was raised to "the maximum" around Kuwait's vital oil facilities, Energy Minister Sheikh Ahmad Fahd al-Sabah announced Sunday after a cabinet meeting dominated by fears of spiralling insecurity.
Kuwaiti security sources and Western diplomats told AFP on Sunday that they believed the unrest was the work of Saudi Islamists fleeing a police crackdown at home and Kuwaitis returning from fighting US troops in Iraq.
Sheikh Nawaf also announced the formation of a joint operations room between the emirate's various security agencies to coordinate raids on suspected hideouts.
01/17/2005 17:00 GMT - AFP