Kuwait arrests four men after ‘uncovering ISIL-cell’

Kuwait’s has uncovered a network of members from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) who fought in Iraq and Syria and detained several of its members, the country’s interior ministry said.

Authorities arrested four men while the fifth was killed in a “terrorist” operation in Iraq, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official KUNA state news agency said on Thursday.

All the suspects were born between 1982 and 1990 and are thought to be Kuwaiti nationals.

RELATED: Can Kuwait justify mandatory DNA testing?

A trial is set to open on August 4, which will see the suspects tried in absentia.

The individuals admitted receiving lessons in the “science of a terrorist organisation” and military training, the statement said. “They were involved in fighting operations in both Syria and Iraq,” it said.

The Gulf state launched a security crackdown on ISIL after a June 26 attack claimed by the group, when a Saudi suicide bomber blew himself up inside a Shia Muslim mosque, killing 26 people.

The government said the bombing, Kuwait’s worst ever such attack, was aimed at stoking sectarian strife in the majority Sunni state, where the two sects have traditionally co-existed in peace.

An interior ministry source told the Reuters news agency the individuals named in Thursday’s statement were not connected to the June 26 attack and it was being treated as a separate case.