Paul Handley
Agence France Presse
RIYADH: Alleged armed infiltrators from Yemen killed one Saudi soldier and wounded another 11 in an attack near the country’s southern border, Saudi Arabia said on Wednesday. The attack took place early on Tuesday in the mountainous border region of Jabal al-Dukhan, across from an area where Yemeni forces have been fighting Zaydi Shiite rebels for weeks, according to a statement on the official SPA news agency.
“Armed men infiltrated at Jabal al-Dukhan … and opened fire on the Border Patrol with an assortment of weapons, killing one and [wounding] 11 others,” SPA reported citing an unidentified government spokesman.
A Saudi Interior Ministry official contacted by AFP said he had no information on whether any of the attackers were wounded or captured in Tuesday’s attack, and said they had not yet been publicly identified.
A website for the Zaydi rebels said that on Monday evening they “gained full control of the Jabal al-Dukhan area between the Yemeni and Saudi Arabian borders,” following a confrontation in which Yemeni security forces were defeated and their weapons seized.
On Monday the rebels, also known as Houthis, accused Riyadh of permitting Yemeni government troops to launch attacks against them from a Saudi security installation in Jabal al-Dukhan.
Saudi authorities have “allowed the Yemeni Army to use a Saudi base in Jabal al-Dukhan from which it launched attacks,” the rebels said in a statement received by AFP.
“We advise the Saudi regime to remain impartial and not allow the Yemeni Army to use its territories to attack us, because we would be otherwise forced to retaliate,” they added.
It is not the first time that Zaydi rebels have accused neighboring Saudi Arabia of aiding the Yemeni Army, which launched an all-out offensive on the rebels’ stronghold in the Saada region on August 11.
Hundreds of people have been killed or wounded in the ongoing clashes, and tens of thousands forced to flee their homes, resulting in a humanitarian crisis complicated by a dire shortage of food and other basic necessities.
Last month the Zaydis accused Saudi forces of firing across the border.
The Saudis have steadfastly denied such charges but the fighting between the Zaydis and the Yemen government has raised deep concerns in Riyadh, which has tightened up security on the border.
Diplomats say Riyadh is likely providing various kinds of support to Sanaa, including possibly financial, intelligence and logistical help.
The Sanaa government, for its part, accuses Shiite Iran of backing the rebels. It announced last week the seizure of five Iranians on a boat loaded with arms in the Red Sea that it said was destined to the rebels.
But an informed Saudi official, speaking off the record, said recently there was little evidence that Tehran was actively supporting the Zaydi rebels.
AL-Qaeda blasts Saudi king over mixed university
RIYADH: The Yemen-based branch of Al-Qaeda has accused Saudi King Abdullah of violating Islam by launching the kingdom’s first public university where men and women can mix, SITE Intelligence reported.
Ibrahim al-Rubaish, a Saudi member of Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), said in an audio message posted on the Internet that the new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, where post-graduate science students and researchers will work together, violated Islamic Sharia law.
“The father of the daughter or the brother of the sister or the husband of the wife, how can they accept that these [women enrol] in this university, this university that violated Sharia, violating even the system that this government claims to apply?” Rubaish asked, according to a transcript issued late on Tuesday by SITE, a US-based monitoring group.
“What [does one think] of a woman who studies with a Christian or a Jew, whose study is being supervised by an atheist or a pagan?” said Rubaish, a former Guantanamo prisoner who fled to Yemen after being repatriated to Saudi Arabia.
In a direct attack on the Saudi monarchy, Rubaish blamed King Abdullah, saying he is moving the country toward “secularism.”
“If he is not able to distinguish between good and evil and what is good and harmful, then how can he be put as the ruler over millions of people?”
“I call upon every Muslim to [distance themselves] from this agent apostate government, that has clearly demonstrated that it prefers infidelity to faith, and that all it wants from Islam is the the parts that do not affect its secularist method,” Rubaish said.
Rubaish’s statement came in a 17-minute audio message posted to Internet jihadist forums on November 1, SITE added.
On September 23 Abdullah presided over the launch of the new research-focused science university on the Red Sea coast north of Jeddah, whose student and faculty body mixes men and women from all over the world. – AFP
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