Human Rights Watch said that the Houthis forcibly expelled thousands of Ethiopian migrants from northern Yemen last April, under the pretext of the Coronavirus, which led to dozens of deaths and forced displacement to the Saudi border.

The organization indicated that Saudi border guards shot the fleeing migrants, killing dozens of them.

While hundreds of survivors fled to a mountainous border region, the Saudi authorities arbitrarily detained hundreds of others in conditions described by the organization as appalling, without being able to legally challenge their detention or deportation to Ethiopia.

The organization called on the United Nations agencies to intervene to address the threats against Ethiopian immigrants, and to press for accountability for those responsible for the killings and other violations against them.

Ethiopian migrants told Human Rights Watch that after being stranded for days without food or water, Saudi authorities allowed hundreds to enter the country, but arbitrarily detained them in unsanitary and poor facilities.

The organization suggested that hundreds - including children - may still be stuck in the mountainous border region.

According to Nadia Hardman, a researcher on refugee and migrant rights at Human Rights Watch, "the fatal disregard shown by Houthi and Saudi forces towards civilians during the armed conflict in Yemen was repeated in April with Ethiopian migrants on the Yemeni-Saudi border."

Ethiopian eyewitnesses interviewed by the organization in Saudi Arabia stated that in mid-April Houthi fighters brutally arrested thousands of Ethiopians in Al-Ghar, a village in Saada governorate that is inhabited by unofficial migrants.

The fighters forced the migrants into pickup trucks that drove them to the Saudi border, and they used small arms and light weapons to shoot anyone who tried to flee.

Witnesses said that Houthi fighters shouted that the migrants were "carrying the Corona virus" and should leave the cave within hours.

The United Nations said that during the past year (2019), 120,000 migrants from the Horn of Africa entered Yemen by sea, most of them from Ethiopia, and their goal was to infiltrate into Saudi Arabia to search for work.

And last December, the Houthis accused Saudi border guards of launching artillery strikes that killed 18 Africans and 6 Yemenis.