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Barbara Starr: U.S. probes al Qaeda ties in Kuwait attack
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Pentagon officials said Wednesday they believe the al Qaeda terror network is connected to an attack at a U.S. military training exercise in Kuwait that left one Marine dead and another wounded. They said it appears two assailants, who were killed after Tuesday's attack, had undergone training in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr filed the following report: STARR: Here at the Pentagon, after a lot of caution all day [Tuesday], officials now say they do believe the attack on U.S. Marines in Kuwait was connected to al Qaeda. What they are telling us is they see a number of connections, but they are not sure yet if the al Qaeda leadership itself ordered the attack. What they now believe is the two dead assailants shot by the U.S. Marines in a gunfire exchange [Tuesday] had been to Afghanistan and had received training in al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and then had returned to Kuwait. Those two dead assailants also have family members who the U.S. military believes they are holding as detainees at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Now in addition to these two dead assailants, there are two other suspected co-conspirators now in custody by the Kuwaiti Ministry of the Interior, and we are told that the Kuwaitis are searching for one other man they believe is still at large. ... What they don't know is if al Qaeda ordered the attack, or perhaps, very disturbingly to the U.S. military, this is now another one of the attacks that have been independently conducted by al Qaeda cells around the world. We are told the military exercises in Kuwait will resume. There will be very strict security, of course. This was not a live-fire exercise in the portion that came under attack. Those Marines had no live ammunition to return fire against their assailants. Their assailants got back in their pickup truck, moved to another location and were then shot dead by Marine security guards, and we are led to believe that security will now be very tight around this training exercise. There shouldn't be that much of an impact on the exercise. This was a regularly scheduled training exercise, something the military had long planned and is likely to continue. Of course, the Kuwait military, the Kuwait government, is considered a very close ally of the United States.
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