Hundreds of migrants killed by Saudi border guards - report

Saudi borderline guards are accused of the wide sidesplitting of migrants on the Yemeni borderline successful a caller study by Human Rights Watch.

The study says hundreds of people, galore of them Ethiopians who transverse war-torn Yemen to scope Saudi Arabia, person been changeable dead.

Migrants person told the BBC they had limbs severed by gunfire and saw bodies near connected the trails.

Saudi Arabia has antecedently rejected allegations of systematic killings.

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, titled They Fired On Us Like Rain, contains graphic grounds from migrants who accidental they were changeable astatine and sometimes targeted with explosive weapons by Saudi constabulary and soldiers connected Yemen's rugged bluish borderline with Saudi Arabia.

Migrants contacted separately by the BBC person spoken of terrifying night-time crossings during which ample groups of Ethiopians, including galore women and children, came nether occurrence arsenic they attempted to transverse the borderline successful hunt of enactment successful the oil-rich kingdom.

"The shooting went connected and on," 21-year-old Mustafa Soufia Mohammed told the BBC.

He said immoderate successful his radical of 45 migrants were killed erstwhile they came nether occurrence arsenic they tried to sneak crossed the borderline successful July past year.

"I didn't adjacent announcement I was shot," helium said, "but erstwhile I tried to get up and walk, portion of my limb was not with me."

It was a brutal, chaotic extremity to a three-month travel fraught with danger, starvation and unit astatine the hands of Yemeni and Ethiopian smugglers.

A video filmed hours aboriginal shows his near ft astir wholly severed. Mustafa's limb was amputated beneath the genu and now, backmost with his parents successful Ethiopia, helium walks with crutches and an ill-fitting prosthetic limb.

"I went to Saudi Arabia due to the fact that I wanted to amended my family's life," the father-of-two said, "but what I hoped for didn't materialise. Now my parents bash everything for me."

Some survivors amusement signs of heavy trauma.

In the Yemeni capital, Zahra tin hardly bring herself to talk astir what happened.

She says she is 18, but looks younger. We are not utilizing her existent sanction to support her identity.

Her journey, which had already outgo astir $2,500 (£1,950) successful ransoms and bribes, ended successful a hail of bullets astatine the border.

One slug took each the fingers of 1 hand. Asked astir her injury, she looks distant and cannot answer.

According to the UN's International Organization for Migration, much than 200,000 radical a twelvemonth effort a perilous journey, crossing by oversea from the Horn of Africa to Yemen and past travelling connected to Saudi Arabia.

Human rights organisations accidental galore acquisition imprisonment and beatings on the way.

The oversea crossing is unsafe enough. More than 24 migrants were reported missing past week aft a shipwreck disconnected the seashore of Djibouti.

In Yemen, the main migrant routes are littered with the graves of radical who person died on the way.

Dozens of migrants were killed 2 years agone erstwhile occurrence tore done a detention centre successful the capital, Sanaa, tally by the country's Houthi rebels who power astir of bluish Yemen.

But the abuses outlined successful the latest HRW study are antithetic successful standard and nature.

"What we documented are fundamentally wide killings," the report's pb author, Nadia Hardman, told the BBC.

"People described sites that dependable similar sidesplitting fields - bodies strewn each implicit the hillside," she said.

The report, which covers the play from March 2022 to June this year, details 28 abstracted incidents involving explosive weapons and 14 of shootings astatine adjacent range.

"I person seen hundreds of graphic images and videos sent to maine by survivors. They picture beauteous terrifying injuries and blast wounds."

The remoteness of the borderline crossings and the trouble of tracking down survivors marque it intolerable to cognize precisely however galore radical person been killed, accidental the authors.

"We accidental a minimum of 655, but it's apt to beryllium thousands," Hardman said. "We person factually demonstrated that the abuses are wide and systematic and whitethorn magnitude to a transgression against humanity," she said.

Reports of wide killings perpetrated by Saudi information forces on the bluish borderline archetypal surfaced past October successful a missive by UN experts to the authorities successful Riyadh.

They highlighted "what appears to beryllium a systematic signifier of large-scale, indiscriminate cross-border killings, utilizing artillery shelling and tiny arms fired by Saudi information forces against migrants."

Despite the horrific quality of the allegations, the missive went mostly unreported.

The Saudi authorities said it took the allegations earnestly but powerfully rejected the UN's characterisation that the killings were systematic oregon large-scale.

"Based connected the constricted accusation provided," the authorities replied, "authorities wrong the Kingdom person discovered nary accusation oregon grounds to corroborate oregon substantiate the allegations."

But past month, the Mixed Migration Centre, a planetary probe network, published further allegations of killings on the border, based connected its ain interviews with survivors.

Its study contains graphic descriptions of rotting corpses scattered passim the borderline area, captured migrants being asked by Saudi borderline guards which limb they privation to beryllium changeable through, and instrumentality guns and mortars being utilized to onslaught ample groups of terrified people.

The study from Human Rights Watch is the astir elaborate yet, with aggregate eyewitness reports and outer imagery of the crossing points wherever galore of the killings are said to person taken place, arsenic good arsenic makeshift burial sites.

The study besides identifies a detention centre astatine Monabbih, conscionable wrong Yemen, wherever migrants are held earlier being escorted to the borderline by equipped smugglers.

According to 1 migrant interviewed by HRW, Yemen's Houthi rebels are successful complaint of information astatine Monabbih and enactment alongside the smugglers.

A outer photograph shows agleam orangish tents packed intimately unneurotic wrong a fenced-off compound.

While the HRW study covers events up to June this year, the BBC has uncovered grounds that the killings are continuing.

In the bluish metropolis of Saada, footage seen by the BBC shows migrants injured astatine the borderline arriving successful a infirmary arsenic precocious arsenic Friday. In a adjacent cemetery, burials were taking place.

The BBC has approached the Saudi authorities for remark astir the allegations made by UN rapporteurs, the Mixed Migration Centre and Human Rights Watch, but has not received a response.