Saudi: Airstrikes near Yemen targeted infiltrators

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia said Friday it carried out airstrikes against "infiltrators" from Yemen that were limited to areas inside Saudi territory, and vowed to press on with the military action until the border with its restive neighbor was secure.

The statement, carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, did not identify the infiltrators or address claims by Arab diplomats on Thursday that the strikes hit across the boundary, targeting Shiite rebels who have been battling Yemeni government forces for the past few months in Yemen's northern Saada province.

The SPA statement stressed the Saudi military action was confined to areas within the kingdom's borders.

In Yemen, however, a military official said Saudi forces on Friday continued to shell rebel positions in Saada. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists.

Regardless of the location of the bombardment, the offensive threatens to embroil Riyadh in a conflict that has for months been a major source of worry for the oil-rich kingdom.

Riyadh has been concerned about a spillover of the Yemeni fighting, of Iran's alleged involvement in the conflict and of the possibility that Yemen-based al-Qaida militants could capitalize on the tense situation by smuggling fighters across the long and difficult-to-control border.

More broadly, it raises concerns of another proxy war in the Middle East between Iran and Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally.

The Yemeni government has accused Shiite Iran of aiding the rebels while the rebels have accused Sunni Saudi Arabia, Iran's fiercest regional rival, of carrying out bombing runs against them.

The same dynamic has played out in various forms in Lebanon, where Iran supports the Shiite militant Hezbollah and Saudi Arabia favors a U.S.-backed faction, and in Iraq, where Saudi Arabia and Iran have thrown support to conflicting sides in the Sunni-Shiite fault-line.

The Arab diplomats and Yemeni rebels said Saudi fighter jets and artillery bombardments hit across the border into northern Yemen on Thursday — the first reported Saudi incursion into Yemen in years.

The northern rebels, known as Hawthis, have been battling Yemeni government forces the past few months in the latest flare-up of a sporadic five-year conflict. They claim their needs are ignored by a Yemeni government that is increasingly allied with hard-line Sunni fundamentalists, who consider Shiites heretics.

The rebels said the Saudi airstrikes hit five areas in their northern stronghold but it was not possible to independently verify the reports. They said there were dead and wounded and that homes were destroyed. The rebels' spokesman said people were afraid to get near the areas being bombed, making it difficult to count the casualties.

The SPA statement quoted an unidentified Saudi official as saying the Saudi offensive was prompted by an attack Tuesday by infiltrators from Yemen on Saudi border guards in the Mount Dokhan area that killed one Saudi soldier and wounded eleven.

"That gives the kingdom the full right to take all measures to put an end to this illegal presence," the statement said. "The operations will continue until all positions inside Saudi territory are purged of all hostile elements. All necessary measures will be taken to prevent this from happening again in the future."

The statement said that since Tuesday's ambush, the Saudi military has carried out concentrated airstrikes against the gunmen in the Mount Dokhan region and other areas within Saudi borders.

The military also beefed up border security, "silenced the origin of the infiltrators' fire," tightened control over the areas where the infiltrators had tried to establish a presence and evacuated border villages.

On Friday, the rebels claimed Saudi ground forces crossed the border and that several of the soldiers were captured. A Yemeni defense official denied there had been a Saudi ground incursion, though he said the two nations were cooperating and sharing intelligence. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to speak to reporters.

Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV reported that 20 Saudi soldiers have been wounded in sporadic clashes along the border and that more than 100 Yemeni rebels have been arrested inside Saudi territory.

Yemen's weak central government, which has little control outside the capital, San'a, is fighting on multiple fronts. Besides the northern rebels, it is also confronting a separatist movement in the south. But the most worrisome challenge is a lingering threat from al-Qaida militants in the impoverished country on the tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden, has cooperated with the U.S. in fighting terrorism but has struggled to confront Islamic extremists.

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Associated Press Writer Ahmed al-Haj contributed to this report from San'a, Yemen.

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Nov 06, 2009 - 2:12 p.m. EDT

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