Kuwait, Aug 11 – Kuwait said on Tuesday that it had foiled an al-Qaeda-linked plan to bomb a US army camp and other ”important facilities” in the Opec oil-exporting state.

An interior ministry statement said all six members of the al-Qaeda-linked cell had confessed after being arrested. It did not say if the targeted facilities included oil industry plants in Kuwait, the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter.

”The state security has uncovered a terrorist network following al-Qaeda, and includes six [Kuwaiti] citizens who have planned to carry out a plan to bomb Arifjan Camp, the state security building and other important facilities,” the ministry said.

Camp Arifjan is located south of Kuwait and serves as a staging ground for forces deploying in Iraq.

Kuwait, the launch pad for the 2003 US-led war on Iraq which ousted the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, remains a logistics base for the US army to support its troops in Iraq.

Al-Qaeda has waged attacks in the Gulf Arab state in recent years, but a crackdown by governments in the region has succeeded in preventing fresh violence, such as bombings of foreign housing complexes and oil sites in several Gulf states including Saudi Arabia.