Kuwait arrest Iraqi fishermen who crossed border
Six held less than two months after waterway deal struck between countries
Basra: Kuwait has arrested at least six Iraqi fishermen and seized their boats for crossing into the emirate’s territorial waters, an Iraqi official told AFP on Saturday. The group were arrested on Friday, according to Abed Ali Fadhel, head of the city council of Fao, a port town 535 kilometres south of Baghdad.
Kuwait’s coastguard often seizes Iraqi fishing boats and detains fishermen for illegal entry. The latest arrests come less than two months after Iraq approved a deal with Kuwait regulating the use of a shared waterway through which most of Baghdad’s oil exports flow, which Iraq had accused Kuwait of attempting to cut off.
Control of the Khor Abdullah waterway is one of several outstanding issues between Iraq and Kuwait remaining from now-executed dictator Saddam Husssin’s August 1990 invasion of the emirate.
