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Sunday, October 27, 2024

Hundreds of migrants killed by Saudi border guards – report

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Saudi border guards are accused of the mass killing of migrants along the Yemeni border in a new report by Human Rights Watch.

The report says hundreds of people, many of them Ethiopians who cross war-torn Yemen to reach Saudi Arabia, have been shot dead.

Migrants have told the BBC they had limbs severed by gunfire and saw bodies left on the trails.

Saudi Arabia has previously rejected allegations of systematic killings.

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, titled They Fired On Us Like Rain, contains graphic testimony from migrants who say they were shot at and sometimes targeted with explosive weapons by Saudi police and soldiers on Yemen’s rugged northern border with Saudi Arabia.

According to the UN’s International Organization for Migration, more than 200,000 people a year attempt a perilous journey, crossing by sea from the Horn of Africa to Yemen and then travelling on to Saudi Arabia.

Human rights organisations say many experience imprisonment and beatings along the way.

The sea crossing is dangerous enough. More than 24 migrants were reported missing last week after a shipwreck off the coast of Djibouti.

In Yemen, the main migrant routes are littered with the graves of people who have died along the way.

Dozens of migrants were killed two years ago when fire tore through a detention centre in the capital, Sanaa, run by the country’s Houthi rebels who control most of northern Yemen. (BBC)

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