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22-08-2023
NEW YORK: 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 media 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.
Migrants contacted separately by the media have spoken of terrifying night-time crossings during which large groups of Ethiopians, including many women and children, came under fire as they attempted to cross the border in search of work in the oil-rich kingdom.
“The shooting went on and on,” 21-year-old Mustafa Soufia Mohammed told media.
He said some in his group of 45 migrants were killed when they came under fire as they tried to sneak across the border in July last year.
“I didn’t even notice I was shot,” he said, “but when I tried to get up and walk, part of my leg was not with me.”
It was a brutal, chaotic end to a three-month journey fraught with danger, starvation and violence at the hands of Yemeni and Ethiopian smugglers.
A video filmed hours later shows his left foot almost completely severed. Mustafa’s leg was amputated below the knee and now, back with his parents in Ethiopia, he walks with crutches and an ill-fitting prosthetic limb.
“I went to Saudi Arabia because I wanted to improve my family’s life,” the father-of-two said, “but what I hoped for didn’t materialize. Now my parents do everything for me.”
Another Ethiopian migrant, who we are calling Ibsaa to protect his identity, said he was shot at the border by men wearing Saudi military uniforms.
“They beat us, killed some and took those who survived to the hospital. The bodies of those killed were left scattered on the ground,” he told media.
“I was shot between my thighs near my groin, and my legs are paralyzed now. I can’t even walk. I thought I would die.” (Int’l News Desk)
