Kuwaiti media said shots were fired from
the Iraqi side of the frontier, aimed at members of a border demarcation team
working inside Kuwait.
Iraqi police gave a different account,
saying officers had fired into the air to break up a demonstration inside Iraq
by locals unhappy about the position of the boundary.
Both countries agreed to map out the exact
position of their shared border after the first Gulf War - when Iraqi dictator
Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 and was forced out by a U.S.-led
coalition.
Iraq formally accepted a U.N.-demarcated
border line in 1994. But many Iraqis in the area remain opposed to it, saying
they lost homes and territory.
Kuwaiti news website Al-Aan quoted a
security source saying an exchange of fire broke out on Monday after Iraqis
hurled stones at Kuwaitis doing maintenance work on border posts.
Kuwait withdrew the border demarcation
team after the shooting "to calm the situation," the country's Al-Rai newspaper
reported in a brief story.
State news agency KUNA said Iraqis in the
border area had "sabotaged" the border fence and "obstructed U.N.-supervised
border signs maintenance," but did not mention any shooting.
Kuwait called on Iraqi security
authorities to put an end to such actions, KUNA said, citing an anonymous
foreign ministry official.
Iraqi police sources in Um Qasr, near the
border, said some officers had fired in the air to disperse demonstrators who
had thrown stones at them during a protest against the demarcation.
Leaders from both countries have been
working to improve diplomatic ties in the past year despite ongoing public
wariness.
The Middle East neighbors came to an
agreement over Gulf War-era debts last year. Kuwait's ruler and Iraq's prime
minister have also visited each other's countries.
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