Saudi Arabia’s border guards detained 148,000 people in the last three months and seized weapons, bombs and thousands of rounds of ammunition, Al-Riyadh newspaper said Thursday. It said a report by the border guards covering the final quarter of the last Islamic year, which ended on February 20, showed 1,800 smugglers were also arrested. Saudi Arabia, facing a surge of militant violence fueled by arms slipped across its porous desert and mountain borders, is trying to tighten control over its frontiers. It has agreed to step up security coordination with southern neighbor Yemen after a row last month over a barrier Saudi Arabia was building on their joint border. Al-Riyadh newspaper said the border guards seized 71 unspecified weapons, 60,000 rounds of ammunition, 30 gun magazines, 100 sticks of dynamite and 14 bombs. It gave no comparative figures but a senior Saudi official said two years ago that 420,000 people, mainly from Yemen, were detained in the year to August 2002. Full Story
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