Saudis Bomb Yemen Rebels Across Border

Did the Saudis get UN approval, before they took military action? Will the world condemn them for taking matters into their own hands? If Muslims want to have their civil war, let them. Not everything is our problem.

Saudis bomb Yemen rebels across border

By AHMED AL-HAJ and SALAH NASRAWI

SAN'A, Yemen – Saudi Arabia sent fighter jets and artillery bombardments across the border into northern Yemen on Thursday in a military incursion apparently aimed at helping its troubled southern neighbor control an escalating Shiite rebellion.

The Saudis — owners of a sophisticated air force they rarely use — have been increasingly worried that extremism and instability in Yemen could spill over to their country, the world's largest oil exporter. The offensive came two days after the killing of a Saudi soldier, blamed on the rebels.

Yemen denied any military action by Saudi Arabia inside its borders. But Yemen's president is a key ally of the Saudis, making it highly unlikely the kingdom would have launched the offensive without tacit Yemeni agreement.

The offensive immediately raised concerns of another proxy war in the Middle East between Iran and Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally. Shiite Iran is believed to favor the rebels in Yemen while Saudi Arabia, which is Sunni, is Iran's fiercest regional rival.

The same dynamic has played out in various forms in Lebanon, where Iran supports the Shiite militant Hezbollah and Saudi Arabia favors a U.S.-backed faction, and in Iraq, where Saudi Arabia and Iran have thrown support to conflicting sides in the Sunni-Shiite struggle.

A top Saudi government adviser confirmed "a large scale" military operation underway on the Saudi-Yemeni border with further reinforcements sent to the rugged, mountainous area.

"It is a sustained operation which aims to finish this problem on our border," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. He said Saudi troops were coordinating with Yemen's army, but Yemen's defense ministry denied the Saudis were inside the country.

The northern rebels, known as Hawthis, have been battling Yemeni government forces the past few months in the latest flare-up of a sporadic five-year conflict. They claim their needs are ignored by a Yemeni government that is increasingly allied with hard-line Sunni fundamentalists, who consider Shiites heretics.

The rebels said the Saudi airstrikes hit five areas in their northern stronghold Thursday but it was not possible to independently verify the reports. They said there were dead and wounded, and that homes were destroyed.

"Saudi jets dropped bombs on a crowded areas including a local market in the northern province of Saada," Hawthi spokesman Mohammed Abdel-Salam told The Associated Press. "They claim they are targeting al-Hawthis, but regrettably they are killing civilians like the government does."

He said the attacks were followed by hundreds of shells from the border, but there was no reliable information about casualties.

The fighting is more than 600 miles from Saudi Arabia's oil fields on the kingdom's eastern Persian Gulf coast. But northern Yemen overlooks the Red Sea, the world's busiest route for oil tankers.

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Iran Hangs 13 Sunnis

After the mass demonstrations in Iran the ruling Mullahs hanged numerous opposition supporters. Today the Shiite leaders of Iran have continued with their Islamic blood lust and have hanged over a dozen of their Sunni rivals.

13 members of Sunni Muslim rebel group executed by hanging in Iran
Tuesday, July 14th 2009

Authorities in southeastern Iran on Tuesdayhanged 13 members of a Sunni Muslim rebel group convicted of bombingsand killings in the area, the official IRNA news agency reportedTuesday.

The report said Abdulhamid Rigi,brother of Abdulmalik Rigi, leader of the group known as Jundallah orSoldiers of God, had been scheduled to be hanged along with the 13 menon Tuesday but his execution was postponed. It gave no reason for thepostponement.

Earlier on Tuesday, state radio reported that Abdulhamid Rigi was one of 14 men hanged.

There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy.

Theexecutions, according to the state radio, took place in the city ofZahedan, some 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) southeast of Iran's capitalTehran and scene of some of the deadliest attacks blamed on Jundallah,which has carried out bombings, kidnappings and killings in the area inrecent years.

The group is composed of Sunnisfrom the Baluchi ethnic minority who complain of persecution by theoverwhelmingly Shiite and Persian Iranian government.

IRNAsaid all 13 men were supposed to be hanged in public but authoritieschanged their mind at the last minute and decided to execute theminside Zahedan's main prison. The state radio had earlier reported thatthe executions took place in public.

The areain southeast Iran where Jundallah is active also is a key smugglingpoint for drugs - mainly opium - and is the scene of frequent clashesbetween police and traffickers.

Iranianauthorities say Jundallah has close ties to "foreign forces" inneighboring Afghanistan, a possible reference to the al-Qaida terrornetwork.

Iran has faced several ethnic andreligious insurgencies that have carried out sporadic, sometimes deadlyattacks in recent years - though none have amounted to a serious threatto the government.

In May, a suicide bombingtargeting a Shiite mosque in Zahedan killed 25 worshippers. In 2007, acar bomb killed 11 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards nearZahedan, capital of the large Sistan-Baluchistan province and home toabout a million of Iran's five million Sunni Muslims.

The remainder of Iran's 70 million people are mostly Shiite Muslims.

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Canada:Sunni vs. Shiite Fight Breaks out

It is so refreshing to see that besides the Israel-Palestine conflict Israel-Palestine conflict be dragged into North America, the begins of the Sunni-Shiite conflict has come to us also.

Hat tip to The Religion of Peace

Hockey player says Burnaby fight was religiously motivated
January 26, 2009
CBC News
Izaiah Buksh is suffering from bruises and will need to undergo a root canal after what he says was a religiously charged fight that broke out at a ball hockey tournament in Burnaby, B.C., on Sunday.

The 20-year-old, who was playing in the B.C. Muslim Sports Association-sponsored event, said he was warned not to play in the tournament because, though he's a Muslim, he is not a Sunni.

The mood of the game turned tense early on when his team took an early lead. Buksh said the opposing team, made up of Sunni Muslims, told him, "You guys shouldn't even be here. You're not Muslim."

Violence ultimately escalated after a play where the opposing goalie swung his stick at Buksh.

Buksh said he went to tell the referee, and when he turned around, he was attacked by a player.

That's when the fight broke out.

"Another player on my team came in and then my dad and the coach came in. At the end, it was most of the gym to three or four guys," Buksh recounted.

He estimates his group was outnumbered about 10 to one.

Buksh's father, Ahmed, said he feared for his son's safety.

"It was basically a riot by that time and swarming — one of my sons fell down."

The B.C. Muslim Sports Association said it will issue sanctions against some players. It contends, though, that the sanctions are purely sports-related and that the incident was not religiously motivated.

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