Kuwait Television quoted Colonel Yussif al-Mulla as saying that a ninth missile was fired by Iraq, but it was not regarded as a threat to any vital or populated area. He did not mention where the missile landed.

Before the attack that came just after midnight, sirens sounded for the seventh time in the capital following eight missile attacks throughout Thursday in the wake of a US-led attack on Iraq.

Late Thursday night, two missiles landed in the sea off the coast of this tiny emirate without causing any harm, Kuwaiti government said in a statement.

The missiles fired were aimed at al-Shuaiba area, the site of one of Kuwait's main oil refineries, 80 km south of Kuwait city, the statement said.

Earlier Thursday, Kuwait's Defense Ministry said Iraq had fired a total of six Scud missiles on northern Kuwait in retaliation for a US-led attack.

Two of the Scud missiles were intercepted by the anti-missile Patriot batteries deployed in the tiny Gulf emirate, the ministry said.

The Kuwaiti Defense Ministry reported no casualties in the attacks, adding that the missiles only carried conventional warheads despite the fear that Iraq might unleash chemical or biological retaliation.

But Iraq denied Thursday that it has Scud missiles and other weapons of mass destruction.

After the US forces launched the first wave of predawn air raids on neighboring Iraq, sirens sounded repeatedly in Kuwait as television flashed "Danger" warnings periodically.

The airport here remained open Thursday and flights out of the country were packed with mostly foreigners seeking to flee the danger of war.

The oil-rich emirate was freed from the seven-month Iraqi occupation by the US-led coalition forces in the 1991 first Gulf War.

Kuwait is currently hosting about 140,000 US-British troops in a massive military buildup in the Gulf region for a massive military offensive to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.

(Xinhua News Agency March 21, 2003)