WILL GOLDSTONE INVESTIGATE….SAUDIS BOMB YEMENI REBELS

Posted By on November 8th, 2009

HERE’S TO VICTORY FOR BOTH SIDES…RSK

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=akNzxFfpF_BU&pos=9

By Henry Meyer and Khaled Abdullah

Nov. 8 (Bloomberg) — Saudi warplanes bombed Yemeni rebels, as a five-day offensive by the oil-rich kingdom on its border with Yemen left three soldiers dead and another four missing.

Saudi Arabia’s air force fired missiles “intensively” at Yemeni border villages today, the Shiite Muslim Houthi rebels said in an e-mailed statement. Saudi officials say they are ejecting the rebels from their country’s mountainous borders with Yemen and have not entered Yemeni territory.

“We have been clearing the slopes of the mountains within the borders of the kingdom,” Deputy Minister of Defense Prince Khalid bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz said in comments cited by the state-owned Saudi Press Agency late yesterday. Three soldiers have died so far in the offensive, with 15 wounded and four missing, he said.

Saudi Arabia began its military campaign in the border region in the southern Jazan province on Nov. 4, a day after the Yemeni insurgents seized territory and killed a Saudi border guard. The fighting risks dragging the world’s largest oil exporter into a prolonged conflict, according to Eurasia Group, a New York-based political risk consulting firm.

“Saudi Arabia has been covertly aiding Sana’a in its fight against the Houthis for much of the year, but now that Saudi Arabia is escalating the fighting, the danger of greater instability in Yemen is rising,” Eurasia Group said in e-mailed commentary. “Riyadh will find that it cannot easily withdraw from Yemen once it becomes too deeply involved.”

‘To The End’

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh vowed yesterday there will be no dialogue with rebels and fighting will be pursued “to the end,” the official Saba news agency reported from Sana’a, the capital.

The rebels said they downed a fighter plane today in Yemen’s Sadaa border district, according to a later e-mailed statement.

Yemeni army commander Askar Zuail said by phone from Sadaa that a Yemeni Sukhoi jet crashed because of a technical malfunction, and that the pilot is safe and sound after he ejected and landed by parachute. It’s the third fighter jet that the Houthis claim to have shot down since last month.

Saudi Arabia has a 1,500-kilometer (930-mile) border with Yemen, the poorest Arab nation, where al-Qaeda has established bases that it has used as a launch-pad for cross-border attacks on Saudi targets.

Yemen accuses Shiite-led Iran, the main regional rival to Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia, of arming the insurgents. The Houthis claim discrimination by the majority Sunnis in Yemen and want to restore a Shiite imamate overthrown in 1962.

Saudi forces have been targeting rebels in Jabal al-Dokhan, a mountain on the border, and the area is now “completely under control although there is some infiltration in some locations,” the deputy defense minister said after touring the zone yesterday.

The Saudi military killed 50 rebels and captured 40 since starting the military operation, Arab News reported yesterday, citing an unidentified government official.

To contact the reporters on this story: Henry Meyer in Dubai at hmeyer4@bloomberg.net; Khaled Abdullah in Sana’a via the Dubai newsroom at mideastnews@bloomberg.net.

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