Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2015 22:17:08 +0200
Saudi Arabia to raze around 100 villages at Yemen border
Yemenis inspect the rubble of houses destroyed in Saudi Arabia’s airstrikes on the village of Bani Matar, 70 kilometers (43 miles) West of the capital, Sana’a, on April 4, 2015. © AFP
Saudi Arabia plans to raze to the ground around one hundred villages in areas near the border with Yemen, amid airstrikes on the impoverished country.
According to the Saudi-owned al-Hayat newspaper on Sunday, out of 96 border villages targeted for demolition, as many as 10 of them have been destroyed since Riyadh started its airstrikes on Yemen.
The border guard chief in the area, Hassan Aqili, said the decision is to prevent the empty houses in the villages from turning into "a safe haven for traffickers and infiltrators," the Saudi newspaper reported.
Saudi Arabia’s air campaign in Yemen started on March 26 in a bid to restore power to fugitive former Yemeni president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh.
An exchange of fire between Saudi security forces and Yemen's Ansarullah fighters on Friday claimed the lives of two Saudi soldiers on the kingdom’s border with Yemen as resistance against the Saudi aggression on the Arabian Peninsula country continues.
On Thursday, a Saudi soldier was killed and 10 others were wounded in a similar exchange of fire across the Yemeni border.
Hundreds of people have lost their lives since the Saudi airstrikes started more than a week ago, with the UN humanitarian chief, Valerie Amos, saying she is “extremely concerned” about the fate of the civilians.
Hadi stepped down in January and refused to reconsider the decision despite calls by Houthi revolutionaries.
The Ansarullah movement later said Hadi had lost his legitimacy as president of Yemen after he escaped the capital to the southern port of Aden in February.
In late March, Hadi fled Aden, where he had sought to set up a rival power base, to Riyadh after Ansarullah revolutionaries advanced on the port city.