Iraqi flags planted in Kuwait

KUWAIT (Reuter) - Hundreds of Iraqi intruders planted the Iraqi flag on Kuwaiti territory yesterday in protest against the digging of a border trench by the emirate, the UN Iraq-Kuwait Observer Mission (Unikom) said.

About 250 Iraqis threw stones to scare away workers digging the trench, which they said had been built across Iraqi farms without any warning. Kuwait's Interior Minister, Sheikh Ahmad Hamoud al-Sabah, said some of the Iraqi intruders were carrying light weapons. Kuwait later said that Iraqi troops had shot at the al-Mazara border post, which is in the same area.

The incursion was the second border confrontation in a month between Kuwait and Iraq. It happened two days before the UN Security Council's regular 60-day review of economic sanctions on Baghdad, imposed after it invaded Kuwait in August 1990.

The incident occurred in a sensitive northern sector of the border, where Iraqi farmers are being required to vacate a number of farms defined as being inside Kuwait under a UN demarcation completed earlier this year.