Saudi actions spark war fears in Yemen

Sana'a: The five-year-old sporadic war between the Al Houthi rebels and the Yemeni government has entered a new stage with neighbouring Saudi Arabia's direct involvement in this conflict.

Amid these developments, there are widespread fears that the current war may turn into a regional conflagration.

Ali Saif Hassan, chairman of the Political Development Forum, a local NGO, said Al Houthi rebels created new justifications for more regional intervention by attacking Saudi Arabia.

"Although Al Houthi action was for political and media purposes more than a military tactic, it has created new justifications for regional intervention," Hassan said.

"Before Al Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, the calls for stopping the war were based on humanitarian and moral factors, but now the calls will be based on regional and international interests."

Rebel claims

Despite the Saudi official announcement that it had scaled back operations after regaining seized lands, Al Houthi rebels have accused Saudi Arabia of using phosphorous bombs on rebel strongholds inside Yemen.

Saudi scholar Shaikh Abdul Aziz Al Shaikh, the mufti of the kingdom, said in press statements that fighting Al Houthi rebels is "a must" and those soldiers, whether Yemeni or Saudis, who fight them are Mujahideen (holy warriers).

"Al Houthis are making an additional mistake to their big mistakes by trying to impose their corrupt faith on the whole Muslim society," Al Shaikh was quoted by Saudi media as saying.

Saudi Arabia says it will continue the war along with the legitimate Yemeni government to finish off the Al Houthi rebels who attacked and occupied Saudi territory on November 5.

Saudi forces killed and injured dozens of the rebels and arrested more than 250 in the fiercest battles since the beginning of the current round of war in August.

Despite the fact that Saudi forces drove the rebels back and regained its seized territory in four days, especially from the strategic 2,000-metre high Jebel Dukhan Jizan area south of the kingdom, Saudi military officials say they need more time to comb the border areas and clear them of rebels.

On November 5, Al Houthi rebels attacked and occupied the Saudi Jebel Dukhan in the Jizan area, killing two soldiers and injuring ten.

About 40 Al Houthi rebels were arrested while infiltrating Saudi territory in women's clothes.

Some of those arrested were members of Al Qaida, which attempts to use Yemen as launch pad to attack Saudi Arabia.

Saudi officials said at the end of their liberation operations only three soldiers were killed and 15 injured in addition to four women from one family who were killed when rebels pounded their houses in the Jizan area.

Missing soldiers

The Saudi officials said four soldiers went missing. Al Houthi rebels, who claim they are still controlling Saudi territory, said they arrested a number of Saudi soldiers.

"We are waiting for the ground attack from the Saudis and we will confront them with a guerilla war," Al Houthi rebels said in a statement a-mailed to the media on Monday.

About 50,000 Saudi residents from about 240 villages in the border areas were evacuated to safer places in the Kingdom before the Saudis launched their air strikes and artillery bombardments on the rebels.

Meanwhile, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said the war will not stop unless the "group of the traitors and agents" is crushed, referring to the rebels.

‘Real' war

Saleh said on Saturday that the real war started only two days ago, and his army had merely been "training" during the past 90 days of war.

The Yemeni government accuses religious scholars in Iran, Kuwait and Bahrain of supporting the Al Houthi rebels.

Yemeni officials are probing five Iranian sailors who were arrested late last October aboard an Iranian ship laden with weapons including armour-piercing missiles, in the western Yemeni harbour of Midi which is only a few kilometres from Al Malahaid in Sa'ada where the rebels are fighting the armies of Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

"The Iranian crew of the ship destroyed the SIMs of the mobiles and all documents in their laptops and some of the ship's devices so that nobody can understand where the ship came from and where it was going," the state-run media quoted an unidentified investigator as saying this week.

According to military sources, the Yemeni army is preparing for decisive battles with the rebels who seemed to be exhausted from the tight blockade.

Saudi Arabia publicly says it will stand with the legitimate state against the rebels.

On Tuesday the army said in a statement that it controlled the most important roads through which the rebels receive their supplies.

A total of seven cars laden with supplies were destroyed on these roads.