Posted by Hidari
on November 7, 2009, 7:41 pm
'Some Shia rebel sources claimed to have taken complete control of the town after defeating Saudi forces there.
They accuse Saudi Arabia, a conservative Sunni Muslim country, of backing the Yemeni army, fearing the emergence of a strong Shia militia similar to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In turn, the Yemeni Government in Sanaa has accused Iran, a Shia theocracy, of supporting the Huthi rebels as part of a campaign to spread Tehran’s influence across the region. The Government said last week that Yemeni troops had seized five Iranians on a boat loaded with arms in the Red Sea.
Yemen has denied receiving any support from Riyadh, but the tensions emphasised the increasingly fragile situation on the borders of the world’s biggest oil exporter.'
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6903635.ece
As befits a Murdoch paper, the United States' role in the conflict is of course unmentioned.
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