Saudi bombs inside Yemen again: rebels

JIZAN, Saudi Arabia (AFP) – Shiite rebels said Saudi Arabia bombed their positions inside Yemen again Sunday, despite Riyadh's insistence that its attacks are limited to rebel locations inside Saudi territory.

The rebels also claimed they downed a Yemeni government bomber that reportedly crashed near the border with Saudi Arabia, one day after Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh said his three-month-old campaign against them had only just begun.

Saudi troops and heavy artillery continued to mobilise near the kingdom's rugged southwestern border with Yemen six days after a cross-border incursion by the embattled Zaidi Shiite rebels sparked Riyadh's first overt role in Sanaa's war with the insurgents.

On Sunday the rebels, who have been forced towards the mountainous Saudi border by Yemeni troops, told AFP "the Saudis are continuing their air and land shelling of Yemen territory near the border with Saudi Arabia."

Also known as the Huthis, the rebels reiterated -- without offering proof -- that they held several Saudis, a day after Saudi deputy defence minister insisted that four missing soldiers had not been captured.

"There were five missing and one came back. They are missing and not prisoners," Prince Khaled bin Sultan said on Saturday, the official SPA news agency reported.

Speaking near the front in Jizan province, Prince Khaled also said Saudi forces had recaptured all Saudi territory seized by the rebels earlier in the week.

The Saudi response was "a rebuke to intruders who had infiltrated the borders of the kingdom," Prince Khaled said.

Saudi officials in the area suggested their side of the conflict was winding down after nearly a week of fighting killed three Saudi soldiers and four civilians.

Yemeni rebel casulties were not known. A report on Sunday in the Saudi-controlled regional newspaper Asharq al-Awsat said 155 rebel fighters had been captured.

"I think everything is under control now," Abdullah Suweid, aid to the governor of Jizan province, told AFP.

Saudi Arabia burst into the conflict after the rebels, whose stronghold is in Yemen's mountainous northwest province of Saada, crossed into Jizan killing a border guard and taking control of two small villages.

On Wednesday and Thursday, Saudi forces struck back heavily, driving out the intruders and using F-15 and Tornado jets as well as heavy artillery against rebel camps in Saada, according to a government advisor.

Official statements said Saudi forces only attacked the rebels inside Saudi borders, but the rebels also said Saudi jets had bombed and rocketed them inside Yemen.

In the Yemeni capital Saana the government also rejected reports of Saudi attacks inside its territory.

But on Saturday President Saleh said his "Scorched Earth" campaign against the rebels launched on August 11 was only just beginning now, an apparent reference to the Saudis' actions.

"The real combat only started three days ago," Saleh said at a ceremony to inaugurate Yemeni gas exports from a new liquefied natural gas plant on the Gulf of Aden.

Saleh on Saturday insisted he will "never stop this war, no matter how high the financial and human cost."

On Sunday, Saana military sources said a Sukhoi bomber had crashed in the Saudi border region due to mechanical problems.

The rebels said they had downed the aircraft.

"Our anti-aircraft batteries have shot down a military aircraft which was bombing the village of Razeh" close to the Saudi border, rebel spokesman Mohammad Abdessalam told AFP.

It is the third combat aircraft the Zaidi rebels claim to have downed since the launch of the offensive, against government explanations of mechanical problems in each case.

Saudi Arabia's overt entry into the conflict raised concerns that it was evolving into a fight by proxy between Riyadh and regional rival Tehran, which Saana accuses of backing the rebels.

Last month Saana said it had seized five Iranians and a boat laden with arms for the rebels.

An Eritrean opposition leader Sunday alleged that Iran is using Eritrea as a base to provide weapons to the Yemeni insurgents.

"They (rebels) are receiving their arms from Iran through Eritrea," Bashir Eshaq, head of external relations for the opposition Eritrean Democratic Alliance, told AFP.

"The weapons arrive in Eritrea's coastal towns -- mainly Assab, and from then onwards, Huthi rebels smuggle the arms to Yemen at night," he added.