Saudi border guards have fired small arms and sometimes mortar shells at Ethiopian migrants trying to enter the Gulf kingdom through Yemen, killing hundreds of people since last year, New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) alleged on Monday.
The group's report draws on interviews with 38 Ethiopians and four relatives of people who tried to cross into Saudi Arabia from Yemen between March 2022 and June 2023, in addition to using satellite imagery, videos, and photos.
According to the report, those interviewed described 28 "explosive weapons incidents," including attacks by mortar projectiles.
The latest killings appear to be "widespread and systematic" and may amount to crimes against humanity, HRW researcher Nadia Hardman said.
The alleged atrocities have taken place against the background of the civil war in Yemen.
There, a Saudi-led coalition has been fighting Iran-backed Houthi rebels who had seized the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, from the internationally recognized government in 2004.
Houthi rebels allegedly make tens of thousands of dollars a week smuggling migrants over the border to Saudi Arabia, with tens of thousands of Ethiopians displaced among other things by the two-year civil war in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region.
HRW has reported abuses against Ethiopian migrants in Saudi Arabia and Yemen for nearly a decade.
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