Kuwaiti Policeman Is Arrested in Attack on American Soldiers

KUWAIT CITY — A Kuwaiti police officer said to have a history of mental problems was arrested in Saudi Arabia on Friday, a day after he allegedly shot two American soldiers and fled, a Kuwaiti official said.

The suspect, Khaled Shimmiri, was picked up in eastern Saudi Arabia near the border, the state-run Kuwait News Agency reported. He was expected to be extradited to Kuwait, the agency said.

Shimmiri had been a patient at a Kuwait psychiatric hospital, an Interior Ministry official said. It was not known whether he was still receiving treatment.

While Kuwait has sought to the portray the incident as the work of a single unbalanced man, the shooting came amid increasing fears that anti-Americanism is growing in this Persian Gulf state, long an American ally.

It was the second shooting of U.S. troops here in the last six weeks.

Authorities have offered no explanation for the latest attack, and Kuwaiti news reports said Shimmiri was not known to have any ties to extremist Muslim groups.

The two soldiers, wearing civilian garb, were shot as they drove along a desert highway Thursday. The shooting has raised concerns about the safety of the more than 10,000 U.S. troops stationed in Kuwait. Most people here support the U.S. military presence following the 1991 Gulf War, in which U.S.-led forces drove out occupying Iraqi troops.

The number of U.S. troops here has increased in recent months, as Kuwait would be a key staging ground for any attack on Iraq.

U.S. officials have not released the soldiers’ names, but Lt. Col. Paul Gautreaux of the 336th Finance Command in Louisiana confirmed that two of its soldiers were shot in the attack.

Master Sgt. Larry Thomas, 51, who was shot in the upper chest, was in serious but stable condition after surgery, his wife, Geraldine, said in Lake Charles, La.

Thomas, who works as a mail carrier and who oversees the payroll department in the command, was deployed to Kuwait over the summer, she said.

The other soldier was identified by relatives as Sgt. Charles Ellis, also of Lake Charles. His wife, Melanie, told a television station that army officials had notified her of the shooting.