RIYADH, 21 June 2003 — Arms confiscated last year along the Kingdom’s porous 1,800-km border include 263 firearms, 1.2 million rounds of ammunition, 46,700 sticks of dynamite and a large number of detonators.
Last Wednesday, Saudi border guards foiled an attempt by suspected Yemeni arms dealers to smuggle grenades and guns into the Kingdom for possible use in explosions and assassinations in the Kingdom.
The border guards in Jizan province exchanged fire early Wednesday with a number of Yemeni arms dealers in the mountains.
The guards seized 15 grenades and 10 guns shaped like pens as the dealers fled into Yemeni territory.
In a statement, Maj. Gen. Saleh Al-Santali, a border guard commander, said that border guards arrested 381,900 illegal entrants in the 11-month period ending February 2003 in the southern province of Jizan.
“Some three million kilograms of qat (a narcotic leaf chewed widely in Yemen) were also confiscated, besides small quantities of drugs and liquor,” Al-Santali said, adding that 36 border guards were killed during operations along the Yemeni border.
During the same period, border guards in the Makkah region rescued some 161 people from drowning and foiled 351 attempts of infiltration by fishermen on board 25 fishing boats.
The Kingdom’s border with Yemen is a rugged, mountainous area that is difficult to control and there are constant reports from locals of suspicious activity.
Prince Mishal ibn Saud, the governor of Jizan, said recently that security checks had been stepped up along the border as part of efforts to foil smuggling operations in the area.
