Saudis Arrest War Refugees, Bomb Civilians
11 December 2009, RIYADH – Saudi forces have detained 1,805 people so far this month on the border with its southern neighbour Yemen where it is battling Shiite rebels, the Saudi-owned Asharq Al-Awsat reported on Friday.“One thousand eight hundred and five people who have infiltrated the Saudi-Yemen border were arrested in the last 10 days,” the newspaper said, citing a senior Saudi military source.
It said rebels were among those held on the border, and that they also included African refugees trying to enter the kingdom illegally.
The paper said the Saudi military also foiled an attempted suicide attack by rebel infiltrators from Yemen’s minority Zaidi Shiite community at the frontier on Thursday.
It cited the military source as saying Saudi forces were continuing to bombard Yemeni rebel positions in the mountainous border region from both land and air.
The army “is conducting all its operations on the Saudi side of the border, without crossing into Yemen,” said the source, denying claims by the militants that the Saudis are operating inside Yemen.
In their latest statement, the rebels said that 28 raids were carried out between December 4 and 9 by Saudi warplanes on several sites in Yemen near the border.
“These raids have created numerous victims among those displaced” by the conflict, the statement posted on a website used by the rebels added, without elaborating.
Riyadh’s intervention in the conflict was prompted when rebels killed a Saudi border guard and briefly occupied two Saudi villages on November 3.
