Yemen rebels accuse Saudi of launching major attack

SANAA (AFP) - – Shiite rebels in northern Yemen accused Saudi forces of launching a major cross-border ground and air attack on Monday, a day after an alleged failed incursion.

"The Saudis began an attack along many fronts on the Yemeni border," said the Zaidi rebels, also known as Huthis.

The Saudis are using "all types of ground and air weapons," including tanks, artillery, rocket launchers, Apache helicopters and jet fighters, the rebels said in a statement.

Witnesses from the northern border town of Razah also told to AFP that the Saudis began an offensive on Monday.

"The Saudi army launched a vast offensive against Huthi positions in the border region," said one witness, who asked not to be identified.

But a Yemeni official denied that a Saudi assault was taking place.

"These are allegations and lies that the rebels often repeat to expand the scope of the conflict, and also to give themselves more importance than they really have," he told AFP.

A local military commander in northern Yemen told AFP that the Yemeni air force continued its raids on rebel positions on Monday and targeted the house of one of the rebel leaders in the Jawf region, killing four people.

He said the Yemeni military employed artillery against rebel positions in the north of the Harf Sufyan area, near the Saada region, which is a rebel stronghold.

The Huthis released a statment accusing Saudi Arabia of bombing north Yemen villages on Sunday and through the night, following what they called a failed Saudi incursion.

"The (Saudi) air force began bomb and missile attacks on various villages in the Malahidh, Shedah, Hidan and Razah areas" of northwest Yemen, the rebels said in the statement.

Saudi aircraft also bombed Saqin near the city of Saada, they said, as well as Saada suburbs and a central security building inside the city. The city of Dahyan was also targeted, according to the insurgents.

Sunday's attack was led by "around 50 Hummers" supported by helicopters and fighter jets, before the Saudis were repelled and "the aggressors suffered heavy losses," the Shiite rebels said.

The Saudi-owned pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat on Monday quoted the Saudi military's southern command as saying it had captured 965 Yemeni infiltrators over the previous two days.

The infiltrators were captured in Jebel al-Dukhan, Al-Doud and Al-Rumayh, the paper said.

It was not possible to verify the number with the Saudi military.

The main clashes in northern Yemen over the past three months have pitted the Huthis against the Sanaa government, which on August 11 launched "Operation Scorched Earth," an all-out assault against the insurgents.

Saudi forces entered the conflict on November 4 after the rebels, protesting against alleged Saudi backing for Sanaa, killed a Saudi border guard and occupied two small villages inside Saudi territory the previous day.

The rebels have been clashing with Yemeni government forces on and off in the rugged mountains of Saada province and surrounding areas since 2004.

They complain of being marginalised and oppressed by the government, which accuses them of seeking to reinstate a form of clerical rule that ended in a republican coup in 1962. The rebels deny the claim.

Aid agencies estimate that the violence has caused 150,000 people in northern Yemen to flee their homes in the five years since the fighting first broke out.