Kuwaitis, frightened by government television broadcasts on how to cope with any Iraqi chemical attack, began panic-buying in supermarkets yesterday as they sought to hoard food and water.
Hundreds of families began invading large supermarkets. "I fear for my children, I don't want to see them die without doing anything," said Mr Ali al-Wael (34), a pharmacist.
Kuwait's civil defence department has advised the Kuwaiti population to keep doors and windows hermetically sealed and to stock one room with food and water as well as batteries.
The run on food shops has already proven a windfall for some merchants. "My sales have jumped by more than 500 per cent," the manager of one supermarket said. He said customers are mainly buying milk, bread, cooking oil, various other food products, and adhesive tape.
Iraqi troops occupied Kuwait from August 1990 to February 1991, when they were driven from the emirate by a US-led international coalition force.
Mr Jaafar Ghalum, (27), an engineer, said he did not believe there would be any Iraqi attack. "Saddam Hussein will give in at the last minute," he said.
Kuwait has placed its army on alert and decided to call up its reservists. The authorities have announced that in two days they will begin to distribute gas masks to civilians. According to one daily paper, Kuwait has purchased 50,000 gas masks from Egypt.
Baghdad has ridiculed Kuwait's decision to pass out gas masks. An Iraqi spokesman said, "Iraq will not utilise any mass destruction weapons, because it does not have any more." The spokesman added: "It seems an American company manufacturing gas masks has promised Kuwait a nice commission if it can move large quantities of them."
Kuwait, with a population of nearly two million, less than 40 per cent of whom are citizens, still fears its northern neighbour. That fear is particularly high among the non-Kuwaiti population, members of which fled by the tens of thousands when Iraq invaded in 1990.
The newspaper, Al Rai al Aam, at the weekend advised people not to trust too much in the government's civil defence warning system.
"A stuttering siren means the danger is near, a steady siren means the danger is over, and no siren at all means the invasion has begun," the paper said in a satirical cartoon.
Following the liberation of Kuwait, an official investigation committee found several failings in the emirate's early-warning system.