- KUWAIT (Reuters) - An Iraqi
missile evaded Kuwaiti defense systems and came down near a seafront shopping
mall in Kuwait City early on Saturday, Kuwaiti officials said.
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- Two people were hurt and broken glass and debris scattered.
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- It was the first time since the U.S.-led invasion of
neighboring Iraq a week ago that a missile had landed so close to Kuwait
City. Most missiles have been intercepted by Patriot batteries but this
rocket appeared to skim in below the radar.
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- Debris was strewn around the mall, including what appeared
to be the tailfin of a missile, and a smell of smoke hung in the night
air in the early hours. There was damage to the front and roof of a cinema
building in the mall complex.
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- The official Kuwait News Agency said two people had been
injured -- a Kuwaiti man whose leg was broken and an Egyptian who suffered
a broken shoulder.
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- Officials said the missile was probably a Chinese-built
Silkworm ship-to-ship missile that had been fired from the vicinity of
the Faw peninsula in Iraq. They said it had skimmed low over the sea and
so had evaded detection by radar.
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- "We are prepared for this kind of terrorism from
the Iraqi regime and everyone residing in this country is prepared for
these circumstances," Information Minister Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahd al-Sabah
told Kuwaiti state television.
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- A team of Czech military chemicals weapons experts wearing
full protective suits and gas masks arrived at the scene after the blast,
but Kuwaiti officials later said the missile had no chemical or biological
payload.
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- A policeman at the scene told Reuters he had seen a missile
land in the sea. Other witnesses said the missile appeared to fly in over
the sea from the direction of the Faw peninsula.
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- Mohammed al-Misfir, a Kuwaiti man who was in the area
at the time of the blast, said: "We were very lucky. Normally at this
time the cinema is open. But because of the war, it has been closed so
no-one was hurt."
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- Naval patrol boats chugged slowly up and down the sea
beside the mall, apparently looking for fragments of the missile.
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- Several rockets have been launched at Kuwait from Iraq
since the U.S.-led war against Iraq began. Kuwaiti officials say previous
missiles launched at Kuwait have all been shot down by Patriot batteries
or landed harmlessly in unpopulated areas.
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- Kuwait was the launchpad of the U.S. and British ground
war against Iraq, which began on March 20. U.S. troops have been based
in Kuwait since they drove Iraqi forces out of the country in the 1991
Gulf War after a seven-month occupation.
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