The purpose behind the attack was to provide support to the four guerrillas trapped on a ferry named Laju they hijacked in Singapore after a failed attempt at destroying a Royal Dutch Shell refinery.
The men had been trapped on the ferry for 7 days until they surrendered their weapons and freed their hostages, as a result of the embassy attack they would be flown to Kuwait and then to Yemen.
While the identities or even number of the men involved is unknown they are said to have been members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a secular left-wing Marxist-Leninist revolutionary socialist group founded by George Habash in 1967.
Before noon on 6 February 1974, an unknown number of Palestinian militants who identified themselves as members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine occupied the Japanese embassy in Kuwait City.
The next day, Thursday, February 7, the Japanese government would give in to the guerrillas' demands and provide a plane for the perpetrators of the Laju incident.