US and Kuwaiti investigating teams are being set up to discover how a US Navy warplane dropped a 500-pound bomb, killing five US soldiers and a New Zealander in the Kuwaiti desert near Iraq's border.
The accident during a training exercise was the latest to embarrass the US military, coming just a month after a US Navy submarine sank a Japanese trawler, killing nine civilians aboard the fishing boat.
Defense sources in Kuwait said the bombing accident occurred during a night-time live fire exercise last night which involved mainly Kuwaiti and US troops.
Earlier in the day, British troops were involved in the exercise at the desert training range but they did not take part in live firing, Western defense sources said.
A US investigation board was due in Kuwait this week to discover the cause of the accident in which the bomb fell on a group of military observers.
It was not immediately clear if the US Navy F/A-18 Hornet had missed the target or a ground team wrongly directed it.
Kuwait's Defense Minister, Mr Sheikh Jaber al-Hamad al-Sabah, told reporters in parliament today that his country was forming its own investigation team.
Two Kuwaitis were injured in the accident along with five US soldiers who were hospitalized.
