The Saudi Armed Forces are in “complete control” of the Mount Dokhan region and have “purged the mountains inside the Kingdom” of the Yemeni guerrillas, said Prince Khaled Bin Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz, Assistant Minister of Defense and Aviation, Saturday, in a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA). All mountaintops previously captured inside Saudi territory following the armed infiltration of the Huthi rebels Tuesday are now cleared, he said. “The order of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques was to keep everything within our territory. We have not crossed the Yemeni border and we will not,” he said. Saudi warplanes and artillery continued bombarding the hide-outs of the rebels at the Mount Dokhan region Saturday, driving them out of the territory, with an increasing number of rebels surrendering. Eyewitnesses reported frequent sorties of Saudi fighter jets bombing the hide-outs starting from 2:00 A.M. Saturday. “This is not a conventional war. It is just a shield operation to drive away the infiltrators who have come here for smuggling, violence, or anything else. We were asked to join the Border Guard to finish off this illegal infiltration,” he said. “These hateful infiltrators have done everything against their homeland before entering the Kingdom,” Prince Khaled said, hailing the strong relationship between the governments of Saudi Arabia and Yemen. During the sporadic clashes, three Saudi troops were killed and 15 others were inured. When asked if any Saudis were taken hostage, he said: “Five have gone missing, but one of them has already returned. They are missing, not held hostage,” he said. The Saturday's bombardment reportedly killed at least four armed rebels, according to Al-Arabiya Satellite Channel. Some 150 rebels surrendered to Saudi forces over the past three days of fighting, Al-Arabiya reported Saturday. Nearly 26 others surrendered willingly near Al-Mashnaq border area Saturday, and one armed rebel was killed and another arrested when they tried to sneak into a border village in women's clothes. Sporadic clashes erupted Friday and Saturday along a 50-km borderline between Bani Malik and Al-Khubah in the Saudi border villages of Al-Qarn, Qawa, and Al-Dafeneyah, after the rebels infiltrated the area dressed as women. Army analysts said that taking refuge in the mountains along the border would not help the rebels because of the more advanced war technology of the Saudi forces. “They have miscalculated this time,” said retired Lt. Gen. Yahya Al-Zaydi. The rebels have established a terrorist network that has made a living off of arms and drugs smuggling, and “Now they want to establish a country of their own”, he said. By taking refuge in the mountain, the rebels believe that they will start a “guerrilla war,” with their RPG and assault rifles, said retired Lt. Gen. Saleh Al-Zahrani, former chairman of the security committee at the Shoura Council. Saudi authorities have evacuated the residents of border villages to newly erected camps and the Khubha Hospital has been turned into an emergency center. Fleeing families from Yemen said that the Huthi rebels robbed them of their belongings and kept some of them to be used as human shields. Yemeni forces arrested a child with explosives strapped to his body on his way to the refugee camp in Saada Saturday, official sources said, adding that the Huthi rebels had earlier loaded a 10-year-old child with explosives in an apparent suicide bomb attempt in the old city of Saada.
