Middle East

Saudi Border Guards Accused of Massacring Hundreds of Migrants

‘SYSTEMATIC’

Victims were allegedly targeted with explosive weapons and ordered to carry out rapes.

A Saudi border guard patrols Saudi Arabia’s maritime border with Yemen along a beach on the Red Sea, near Jizan, April 8, 2015.
Faisal Al Nasser/Reuters

Saudi border guards killed “at least hundreds” of migrants and asylum seekers attempting to enter the country through Yemen, a report claimed Monday. Human Rights Watch said the killings of Ethiopian men, women, and children along the Yemeni border between March 2022 and June 2023 would constitute “a crime against humanity” if carried out as part of Saudi government policy. The harrowing report claims that victims were forced to choose which part of their body where they would be shot, while others were targeted with explosive weapons and some were made to rape girls as border guards watched. “The allegations included in the Human Rights Watch report about Saudi border guards shooting Ethiopians while they were crossing the Saudi-Yemeni border are unfounded and not based on reliable sources,” the Saudi government said in a statement.

Read it at The New York Times