Family Caught in Kuwait Flees to U.S. Embassy

The Scripps Ranch family trapped in Kuwait has found refuge in the American Embassy there, the U.S. State Department said Saturday evening.

B. George Saloom, 52, his wife Deborah, 49, and their eldest son Preston, 17, were transferred from a hotel to the embassy on Saturday.

The family, which lives in the 10200 block of Rue Cannes, left for Kuwait three weeks ago. Saloom was to take a job with the Bank of Kuwait.

“The only new information I have is that they’ve been switched to the American Embassy compound,” said Scott Robinson, who is staying at the residence and taking care of the youngest Saloom, 14-year-old Nathan.

“They’re in a much better position right now,” said Robinson. “It’s much more positive.”

Robinson declined to give any more details of the family’s situation.

Previously, the State Department has said the family was safe in a hotel.

On Thursday, Iraq ordered all U.S. and British citizens in Kuwait into two hotels.

A State Department spokesman Friday said that only five of the 2,500 Americans in the country had obeyed the order.

The spokesman said the Iraqi government had not backed up the order, but he added that it had not been rescinded either.

The family’s move comes amid news Friday that Iraq had taken 35 captive Americans in Baghdad from the hotel where they had been kept under armed guard to an undisclosed location.

Iraq sealed Kuwait’s borders after invading on August 2, but a few Americans have managed to escape.

One, Leucadia native and former Associated Press photographer Stephanie McGehee, 37, escaped across the border in a 13-car convoy on Friday after spending a week in hiding.