According to a recent Human Rights Watch investigation, Saudi border guards are responsible for the widespread murder of migrants along the Yemeni border. According to the story, hundreds of people have reportedly been shot to death, many of them Ethiopians trying to enter Saudi Arabia through a war-torn Yemen.

According to migrants who spoke to the BBC, they seen dead dumped on the routes and had limbs removed by gunshots.

Prior until this, Saudi Arabia has denied claims of systematic executions.

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) study, They Fired On Us Like Rain, provides graphic testimonies from migrants who claim that Saudi police and soldiers on Yemen’s rough northern border with Saudi Arabia shot at them and occasionally targeted them with explosive weapons.

As they sought to cross the border in pursuit of employment in the oil-rich country, large groups of Ethiopians, including many women and children, came under fire. Migrants who were contacted separately by the BBC described these harrowing nighttime crossings.

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

He claimed that when trying to cross the border illegally in July of last year, members of his 45-person group of migrants were slain when they came under fire.

“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.”

A three-month voyage filled with peril, malnutrition, and violence at the hands of Yemeni and Ethiopian traffickers came to a horrific, chaotic finish.

Hours later, a video was taken that appears to show his left foot almost entirely amputated. Mustafa’s leg was amputated below the knee, and he now uses crutches and an ill-fitting prosthetic limb to walk while living with his parents in Ethiopia.

“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 materialise. Now my parents do everything for me.”

Some survivors display indicators of severe trauma.

Zahra can hardly bring herself to talk about what transpired in the Yemeni capital.

She claims to be 18 but appears younger. To protect her identity, we are not using her true name.

Her quest ended in a hail of gunfire at the border, after having already spent almost $2,500 in ransoms and bribes.

One hand’s fingers were all shot out by one bullet. She looks aside when asked about her injury and is unable to respond.

Over 200,000 individuals a year try a dangerous sea crossing from the Horn of Africa to Yemen and then on to Saudi Arabia, according to the UN’s International Organisation for Migration.

According to human rights agencies, many suffer from detention and physical abuse along the journey.

The crossing of the sea is hazardous enough. Following a shipwreck off the coast of Djibouti last week, more than 24 migrants were reported missing.

Graves of migrants who have perished on the trip are strewn along Yemen’s main migration routes.

Two years ago, the Houthi rebels, who rule the majority of northern Yemen, set fire to a detention facility in the country’s capital, Sanaa, killing dozens of migrants.

However, the new HRW report describes abuses that are different in scope and kind.

“What we documented are essentially mass killings,” the report’s lead author, Nadia Hardman, told the BBC.

“People described sites that sound like killing fields – bodies strewn all over the hillside,” she said.

The report, which outlines 28 individual events employing explosive weapons and 14 close-range shootings, covers the time period from March 2022 through June of this year.

“I have seen hundreds of graphic images and videos sent to me by survivors. They depict pretty terrifying injuries and blast wounds.”

It is hard to determine with certainty how many people have died because of how far away the border crossings are and how challenging it is to find survivors, according to the authors.

“We say a minimum of 655, but it’s likely to be thousands,” Hardman said. “We have factually demonstrated that the abuses are widespread and systematic and may amount to a crime against humanity,” she said.

Last October, a letter from UN experts to the Saudi government revealed the first reports of extensive executions carried out by Saudi security personnel near the northern border.

In their report, they drew attention to “what appears to be a systematic pattern of large-scale, indiscriminate cross-border killings, using artillery shelling and small arms fired by Saudi security forces against migrants.”

The letter mostly went ignored despite the heinousness of the claims.

The Saudi government asserted that it took the accusations seriously but vehemently disagreed with the UN’s description of the executions as widespread or systematic.

“Based on the limited information provided,” the government replied, “authorities within the Kingdom have discovered no information or evidence to confirm or substantiate the allegations.”

However, based on its own interviews with survivors, the Mixed Migration Centre, a global research network, revealed further allegations of killings along the border last month.

The article provides vivid descriptions of the employment of machine guns and mortars to strike sizable crowds of terrified people, caught migrants being asked by Saudi border guards which leg they wish to be shot through, and rotting corpses being thrown over the border area.

The Human Rights Watch study is the most thorough to date, including numerous eyewitness accounts, satellite photos of the alleged locations of many of the deaths, as well as improvised graveyards.

In addition, the report names Monabbih as a holding facility where migrants are held before being guided to the border by armed traffickers.

According to a migrant HRW spoke with, the Houthi rebels in Yemen are in charge of maintaining security at Monabbih and collaborate with the traffickers.

Bright orange tents are seen crammed closely together in a fenced-off area on a satellite image.

(Adapted from BBC.com)

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