A recent Border Guard report cited by Al-Madina newspaper Wednesday said that officials had detained in the first six months of 2009 127,875 persons attempting to enter the Kingdom illegally. Numerous quantities of illegal materials were seized during the same period, including weapons and ammunition, dynamite and other explosives, hashish, qat, “shamma” snuff and liquor. Al-Riyadh newspaper said the same day that in the previous two weeks alone 30,557 persons were arrested at the border charged with smuggling offences. An Okaz report on the nature of the region's roads described them as “rocky, winding and passing through thick woodland”. “The villages on the border assist their Yemeni counterparts in smuggling, with Saudi homes and Yemeni homes sometimes separated by no more than a few meters,” the report said. “Smugglers and infiltrators use abandoned houses as hiding places before moving on to the main cities in the Kingdom, and use donkeys at night, navigating their way along tracks that take them around checkpoints, and sometimes seeking the help of local shepherds to keep them aware of any police presence.” __
