TIMES ONLINE: Yemen’s civil war spilled into neighbouring Saudi Arabia for the first time yesterday when Shia gunmen shot dead a Saudi security officer in a cross-border attack.
The Shia rebels, known as Huthis, have been backed up against the Saudi border by a Yemeni army offensive launched this summer.
The rebels accuse the Saudis of allowing Yemeni troops to attack them from behind, using a military base in the Saudi town of Jebel al-Dukan.
The kingdom’s news agency said that rebels had entered Saudi territory and attacked patrols.
“The infiltrators used various weapons to fire at the border guard patrols, causing the martyrdom of one security officer and wounding 11 others,” it said. Some Shia rebel sources claimed to have taken complete control of the town after defeating Saudi forces there.
They accuse Saudi Arabia, a conservative Sunni Muslim country, of backing the Yemeni army, fearing the emergence of a strong Shia militia similar to Hezbollah in Lebanon. >>> James Hider, Middle East Correspondent | Thursday, November 05, 2009
