Kuwait News Agency denies reporting US withdrawal

By Mahmoud Barakat

ANKARA (AA) - Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) on Wednesday denied publishing a statement by officials regarding the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Kuwait.

The official news agency denied that it published a statement attributed to Defense Minister Sheikh Ahmad Mansour Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, which said the U.S. forces withdrew from Kuwait.

"KUNA tells its subscribers and readers that its Twitter account has been hacked, thus it reserves legal right to prosecute any party or person behind such false news," the news agency said on Twitter.

Hacking KUNA came amid heightened tension between the U.S. and Iran that led to a series of military escalations.

Early on Wednesday, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' (IRGC) launched more than a dozen ballistic missiles against U.S. military and coalition forces in Iraq.

Tehran's action was in retaliation for last week's U.S. drone strike that killed IRGC’s elite Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani.

Wednesday's attacks continued a series of tit-for-tat recriminations between the U.S. and Iranian-backed forces that began with the killing of an American contractor at a U.S. base in Iraq late last month.