One dead after raid on Saudi border

Caryle Murphy, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: November 05. 2009 5:35PM UAE / November 5. 2009 1:35PM GMT

Saudi soldiers carry the body of their comrade during his funeral in Jizan yesterday. AFP

RIYADH // A Saudi border guard was killed and 11 others injured on Tuesday when their patrol was attacked by armed infiltrators in a mountainous area of the Saudi-Yemeni border, the Saudi government said yesterday.

“Armed men were observed as having infiltrated into the territory of Saudi Arabia at Jabal Dukhan” in the Jizan region, a statement distributed by the Saudi Press Agency said. “The infiltrators had fired [at the Saudis] with a variety of weapons.”

A Saudi official said the attackers’ identity was not yet known and added: “What we know is that we were attacked with men carrying weapons and we had to reply to that.”

But Yemeni rebels have claimed that the clash arose when their forces came under fire from the Saudis and that one rebel was killed, according to an Agence France-Presse report from the Yemeni capital of Sana’a.

“The Saudi border guard shot at one of our vehicles Tuesday, leaving one dead and one wounded,” said a statement posted on the rebels’ website, AFP reported.

The incident underscores growing Saudi concerns about the deteriorating security situation in the kingdom’s poverty-ridden, populous neighbour, where the president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, is coping with both an armed uprising in the north and a secessionist movement in the south.

Saudi officials are concerned that Yemen’s growing instability will provide a sanctuary for the extremist group al Qa’eda in the Arabian Peninsula to launch attacks inside the kingdom.

Only three weeks ago, two al Qa’eda operatives who had come from Yemen were killed in a shoot-out after being detected by Saudi police at a checkpoint.

Dressed as women, the extremists were wearing explosive vests, officials said.

The site of Tuesday’s clash is near a northern region of Yemen where government forces are locked in a fierce battle with the rebels, known as al Houthis.

In the past, the rebels have accused Saudi Arabia of firing rockets at them and of allowing Yemeni troops to use Saudi territory to attack the rebels.

The Saudi government has denied these claims, but it is supporting Mr Saleh’s government financially and politically.

In an earlier statement on their website, the Houthis said they had seized Saudi territory along the border.

“Complete control has been taken yesterday evening of Jabal al-Dukhan … after attacks during which the aggressor was eliminated,” the Tuesday statement said, according to Reuters.

AFP reported that the rebels claimed their seizure of the Jabal al-Dukhan area had occurred on Monday evening after a confrontation with Yemeni security forces. The website described the seized area as being “between the Yemeni and Saudi Arabian borders”, the agency reported.

The rugged, remote border between the two countries is known for being badly marked. In 2000 the neighbours reached an agreement to define the border and hired a surveying company to demarcate it. Saudi Arabia is planning to erect a security fence along the border, through which smugglers regularly bring illegal drugs and arms.

The Houthis belong to an offshoot of Shia Islam known as the Zaidi sect. They are named for their late leader, Hussein Badr Eddin al Houthi, a Zaidi leader who was killed by the Yemeni army in September 2004. The rebels claim they are discriminated against and are fighting to create an autonomous area in northern Yemen.

The Yemeni government launched a major offensive to quell the rebellion once and for all last August. But instead of a quick campaign, government forces have been caught in a lengthy fight.

International aid agencies say that up to 150,000 people have been displaced from their homes by the fighting and there is a growing food shortage in the area.

Although the Saleh government claims that Iran is aiding the Houthis, it has not produced evidence of this. A Saudi official recently described claims of Iranian assistance to the Houthis as “overblown”.

In another recent development, five Yemeni security officials including two senior officers, were killed in an ambush in the eastern province of Wadi Hadramut on Tuesday, the Saudi Gazette reported.

Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen expert at Princeton University, wrote on his blog, Waq Al Waq, that the ambush had “all the hallmarks of” an attack by al Qa’eda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has “targeted Yemeni security officials previously, assassinating investigators in both 2007 and 2008”. The group recently “has expressed a desire to carry out more targeted strikes”, he added.




cmurphy@thenational.ae