Kuwait has arrested two more suspected members of a "terror" group planning to carry out suicide bombings on US military targets in the emirate, a senior interior ministry official said Sunday.
"We arrested two more suspects, both Kuwaiti, on Saturday," the official told AFP, bringing to six the total number of arrests in the case, while the Moroccan ringleader was reported to have fled to Iran using a fake Saudi passport.
The two latest suspects were arrested at a local mailing office where they had gone to receive delivery of a parcel containing fake passports, the official said.
"US military convoys, moving in and out of Camp Doha, were their prime target. They have made full confessions during interrogations," he said.
"Their plan was to use booby traps to attack those convoys through suicidal bombings."
The US military maintains a 4,500-strong contingent in Kuwait that uses equipment stockpiled at Camp Doha, 20 km (13.5 miles) west of the capital, for joint manoeuvres and live firing practice.
US military convoys of tanks and other vehicles use Kuwaiti roads to reach their training sites in the desert north of the camp.
Three other members of the group were picked up on Thursday with 133 kilograms (293 pounds) of powerful explosives and 1,450 detonators, while a fourth suspect was arrested in Qatar Saturday and was due to be extradited to Kuwait on Sunday.
The ministry official said that the fugitive leader of the group was supposed to set the explosives in the cars to have been used in the attacks, while one suspect was a police captain and another a soldier working in a "sensitive" department.
Two of the suspects were involved in an attack earlier this year on a Kuwaiti female student who was not wearing a head covering in line with traditional Muslim dress, he added.
The official confirmed that explosives seized were left behind by the Iraqi troops which were evicted from the emirate in 1991 by a US-led international coalition.
US military experts were expected to study a possible link between the group in Kuwait and those who carried out the suicide bombing of the USS Cole and the attack in Khobar, Saudi Arabia.
Kuwait has boosted security precautions around the US and British embassies in the emirate, setting up road checkpoints and checking cars.
Press reports in Kuwait said the group comprised of Islamic activists who have links to the Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden.
Bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa that killed more than 220 people, is living in Afghanistan as a guest of the ruling Taliban militia -- KUWAIT CITY (AFP)
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