A joint US-Kuwaiti team has been set up to probe how a live-fire exercise just south of the Iraqi border ended in the death of six soldiers, Kuwait's Defense Minister was quoted by AFP as saying Tuesday.
"A joint US-Kuwaiti investigation committee has been set up to investigate the accident," Sheikh Jaber Hamad al-Sabah told reporters outside parliament.
A stray 500-pound (227-kilo) bomb dropped by a US Navy F/A-18 fighter jet killed six military personnel, five Americans and one New Zealander, and wounded at least five others Monday during a close air support exercise in the northern Kuwaiti desert.
"The accident will not alter joint Kuwaiti-US maneuvers. These will continue," Sheikh Jaber stressed, adding that "all but three, one Kuwaiti and two Americans, of the injured have been discharged from hospital."
US Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said that “tragedies such as this occur without warning and for reasons that are difficult to understand.”
“We will work hard to take care of the families involved, and to find out how such an accident could occur," Rumsfeld was quoted as saying, in a statement, by Pentagon of which Albawaba.com received an e-mail copy.
US forces regularly train at the al-Udairi range, where the tragedy took place, rotating through from bases in the United States.
More than a decade after the end of the Gulf War, some 4,500 US troops are deployed at Camp Doha, west of Kuwait City – Albawaba.com
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