Agencies/Dubai
Saudi Arabia said it had regained control of territory seized by Yemeni rebels in an incursion last week, but the rebels denied the claim and said Yemeni villages were being bombed heavily.
Saudi Arabia launched air strikes on rebels in northern Yemen last week after Shia insurgents crossed the border and said they had seized an area called Jabal Dukhan.
The rebels yesterday denied they had lost control of Jabal Dukhan and said the kingdom’s offensive was continuing, with Yemeni villages the target of heavy bombing.
The world’s top oil exporter has become increasingly anxious about instability in Yemen, which is facing a Shia insurgency in the north, separatist sentiment in the south and a growing threat from resurgent Al Qaeda fighters.
“The situation is calm ... especially in Jabal Dukhan, of which full control has been regained,” Prince Khaled bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz, assistant minister for defence and aviation, said on Saturday, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
Prince Khaled said three members of the Saudi security forces were killed and 15 wounded in fighting on the Saudi-Yemeni border.
Four Saudi soldiers were missing, Prince Khaled said, but he denied they had been taken prisoner. He said Saudi security forces had arrested several rebels.
Instructions from Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah specified that any rebel caught on the Saudi side of the border would be arrested, Prince Khaled said, and the kingdom “has not, and will not interfere inside Yemeni borders”.
The rebels, referred to as Houthis after the clan of their leader Abdel-Malik al-Houthi, said on Friday they had captured some Saudi soldiers.
“What is being said about Saudi Arabia seizing Jabal Dukhan is entirely false,” a rebel spokesman was quoted as saying in a statement posted on the Houthis’ website, adding that the Saudis had not taken control of the area.
Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television yesterday reported that Saudi military operations near the border were still in progress.
Abdullah Suweid, aid to the governor of the Jizan province, said 1,300 families have been moved to government-provided housing away from the fighting zone.
The authorities have repatriated hundreds of Yemeni refugees, who fled to Saudi Arabia to escape the fighting, back to Yemen.
“I think everything is under control now,” Suweid said.
Prince Khaled called the Saudi response “a rebuke to intruders who had infiltrated the borders of the kingdom.”
According to government and medical doctors in the region, seven Saudis have been killed in the fighting, including four women whose border home had been shelled, and three security personnel.
Doctors at the regional hospital said they had treated 126 people injured in the fighting, the largest part on Friday when dozens of soldiers arrived with gunshot or shrapnel wounds.
Casualties on the Yemeni rebel side are unknown. The Saudi-controlled newspaper Asharq Al Awsat reported that 155 rebels had been captured by Saudi forces in the fighting.
In Sanaa, the Yemeni government said one of its fighter planes crashed in a rebel stronghold in the north of the country yesterday because of a technical fault.
However, the rebels said they shot it down in Saada, a mountainous province where most recent fighting has taken place.
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