page_title: Faylaka Island attack
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Faylaka Island attack / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: Colonel Matthew S. Reid, USMC
context_page_description: On October 8, 2002, two Kuwaiti citizens with ties to jihadists in Afghanistan attacked a group of unarmed United States Marines conducting a training exercise on a Kuwaiti island, killing one before being killed themselves. The attackers were reported to have served as volunteers with the Taliban in Afghanistan, prior to the U.S. invasion of that country in response to the September 11 attacks of 2001.
  The Marines were on a training exercise on Faylaka Island, an island off the coast of Kuwait. One U.S. Marine was killed and another was seriously injured. The two Kuwaiti attackers were killed after U.S. Marines returned fire in self-defense. The Marines' rifles were loaded with blank rounds for the training exercise, but they were able to engage their Kuwaiti attackers with their pistols.
context_section_description: After killing the two attacking gunmen, the Marines were unsure if there were any more attackers as there was still incoming gunfire. Once gunfire ceased the Marines were unable to find the shooter. The Marines of Lima Company set up a defensive posture, requested more ammunition, searched nearby buildings, stopped civilian vehicles, locked down the area, and detained 31 civilians for investigation, including two medical students suspected of being linked to gunman al-Kandari, handing them over to Kuwaiti authorities for further investigation. An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was dispatched over the island along with British air force Tornadoes and U.S. Air Force F-16s. 
  The exercise the Marines were a part of, Eager Mace, was originally intended to last three weeks, but was cancelled after the attack.
  Though the Iraq War itself would not begin until a few months later in March of the following year, Sledd is considered by some to be the first U.S. combat casualty of the war, as he was killed by hostile fire while training for its commencement. His death became a rallying cry for some Marines who knew him, who said, "Remember how and why Sledd died!" Sledd was posthumously advanced to the rate of corporal. Eight days after the attack, the U.S. government passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq, which legally cleared the way for the U.S. to invade Iraq, which it in March did the following year.
  George R. Simpson, one of the Marines injured in the attack, left the U.S. Marine Corps in 2004. According to his mother, he had two titanium plates installed into his injured arm and with more than twenty-five screws holding the affected area together.
  In mid-2015, one of the suspects connected with the attack was killed by the U.S. government, using a UAV airstrike.
caption: Matthew S. Reid, one of the U.S. Marines present during the attack, pictured here in the mid-2010s as a colonel.
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