Photos of the dead dogs were shared by an NGO for animal rights called Karuq8.

The scandal started in mid-June when Koweit National Petroleum Company broke off a contract with Eastern Securities of Kuwait. A few days later, on June 21, this American private security firm had 24 of its bomb detection dogs euthanised. Previously, these dogs were used to search for explosives on oil fields. Angered by this, an employee of the company posted photos of the dead animals on Facebook.A spokesperson for the Koweit National Petroleum Company said that the company had played no role in the decision to terminate the lives of the dogs. He said that Koweit National Petroleum Company broke its contract with Eastern Securities because “tests carried out by a third party to evaluate the capacity of the dogs to detect bombs were not conclusive.” He also said he regretted that Eastern Security had decided to kill the animals.FRANCE 24 spoke with Maha al-Khatib, an activist who works with the Kuwaiti NGO for animal rights Karuq8 . She thinks that Eastern Securities had the dogs killed because they had become a burden for the company after the Kuwaiti petrol company ended its contract: “Eastern securities had to pay for these dogs’ upkeep, even though they weren’t making any profit from them. So they decided that killing them was the best solution.”Mimi Maamoun, a journalist and animal rights activist, alerted authorities to this incident. She is also the person who first brought this case to the media’s attention.