One dead after stampede at Saudi worker detention centre

Police say foreign detainees at the Al Shemaisi centre in the Red Sea city of Jeddah rioted on Sunday evening and clashed with security personnel.

RIYADH // A detainee died in a stampede during a riot at a Saudi detention centre for migrant workers awaiting deportation, police said on Monday, adding that nine others were injured.

Police spokesman Lt Col Ati bin Attiya Al Qarshi said in a statement that some of the foreign detainees at the Al Shemaisi centre in the Red Sea city of Jeddah rioted on Sunday evening and clashed with security personnel. He did not give the reasons for rioting or reveal the victims’ nationalities.

Yemeni online forums and news websites reported that 10 Yemenis were killed when police opened fire on the rioters who were demanding that Saudi authorities speed up their deportation. The reports say between 6,000 to 10,000 Yemenis are detained in the prison in Jeddah.

The deportations are part of a Saudi campaign to expel undocumented foreign workers after decades of lax immigration enforcement allowed migrants to take many low-wage jobs that the kingdom’s own citizens shunned. Saudi authorities, grappling with high unemployment, now want those jobs for the kingdom’s citizens.

Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis seek work in oil-rich Saudi Arabia, sometimes crossing into the kingdom illegally through their country’s porous northern border. Yemen is the Arab world’s most impoverished country and is reeling from several years of turmoil and political upheaval.

The Saudi migrant sweep has sparked violence before. In November, at least one Ethiopian and a Sudanese were killed in clashes between migrant workers protesting the crackdown and vigilante Saudis in the capital Riyadh. Similar clashes also broke out in Jeddah when police combed the area for migrants.

*Associated Press