Hundreds of migrants killed by Saudi border guards: HRW

LONDON, Aug 21 (BBC): Saudi border guards are accused of the mass killing of migrants along the Yemeni border in a new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW). The report says hundreds of people, many of them Ethiopians who cross war-torn Yemen to reach Saudi Arabia, have been shot dead.
Migrants have told the BBC they had limbs severed by gunfire and saw bodies left on the trails. Saudi Arabia has previously rejected allegations of systematic killings.
The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, titled They Fired On Us Like Rain, contains graphic testimony from migrants who say they were shot at and sometimes targeted with explosive weapons by Saudi police and soldiers on Yemen's rugged northern border with Saudi Arabia.
Migrants contacted separately by the BBC have spoken of terrifying night-time crossings during which large groups of Ethiopians, including many women and children, came under fire as they attempted to cross the border in search of work in the oil-rich kingdom.
The Saudi government said it took the allegations seriously but strongly rejected the UN's characterisation that the killings were systematic or large-scale.
"Based on the limited information provided," the government replied, "authorities within the Kingdom have discovered no information or evidence to confirm or substantiate the allegations."
But last month, the Mixed Migration Centre, a global research network, published further allegations of killings along the border, based on its own interviews with survivors.