By Ulf Laessing
AHAD AL-MASAHARA, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Jamila Sharahili and her five children fled their home after Saudi officials came to her village near the Yemeni border, urging her to escape from a war she knows little about.
"I couldn't sleep because of the shelling," said the woman in her 50s, sitting in a tent in a refugee camp set up by the authorities about 35 km (22 miles) from the border.
"I didn't know where to go, but the civil defence told me everything would be fine. So I packed my most valuable belongings and made it here."
Sharahili's family joined thousands of people who have been forced to leave the area since Saudi Arabia launched a military offensive last month against Yemeni Shi'ite Muslim rebels, known as Houthis, after they seized some Saudi territory.
Mohammad bin Nasser bin Abdulaziz, governor of the densely populated Jizan region at the southwestern tip of the kingdom, estimates that 15,000 people have been evacuated so far.
Aid workers say the total could exceed that because more displaced people are still coming to register.
Saudi Arabia, a staunch U.S. ally and the world's top oil exporter, fears al Qaeda is using instability in impoverished Yemen to set up havens there from which to target the kingdom.
Only in 2006 did Saudi Arabia manage, with the help of foreign advisers, to halt a three-year, home-grown al Qaeda campaign marked by bloody attacks on expatriate residential compounds, government targets and energy installations.
On the Yemeni side, the conflict between the Houthis and the Sanaa government has displaced up to 175,000 people, according to the United Nations estimates.
Fighting has flared on and off since 2004, but intensified in August when Sanaa launched Operation Scorched Earth against the rebels, who complain of marginalisation and neglect.
More than 200 Saudi villages in the border area have been evacuated, officials say.
AIR-CONDITIONED TENTS
Sharahili's new temporary home is in the small town of Ahad al-Masahara, where the authorities have erected more than 700 tents, each housing up to 12 people and equipped with air conditioning and electricity.
Children play on dusty ground, while adults watch television in large tents.
"We came here after we could hear loud shelling and authorities asked us to leave," said Saudi teenager Hanan from the village of Nakhshousha. Her sister Juma said: "We have everything but I miss my studies at my school."
Temporary schools have opened at the camp, along with a clinic staffed by 14 doctors.
Clerics come to the camp in the evening for prayers and religious lectures where men and women are segregated, in line with the kingdom's austere version of Sunni Islam.
"We don't know when they can go back but hopefully it will be soon," said the Jizan governor.
Abduh al-Ahmad Hazazi, a Saudi in his 20s, said he had gone first to another village after fleeing his home in the border area, but the authorities then moved him further from the front.
"They've brought me here because it wasn't safe," he said.
The displaced are from one of the least developed regions of Saudi Arabia, which sits on more than a fifth of global oil reserves. The small governorate of Jizan has some 1.3 million inhabitants and is visibly poorer than the rest of the country.
Roads are bumpier and dirtier, there are fewer schools and paint flakes off many buildings in the dusty regional capital, in stark contrast to the elegant shopping malls and glitzy cafes in the Red Sea port of Jeddah or the capital Riyadh.
The government has been trying to develop Jizan to create jobs for the mostly young population but it still lags behind most parts of the Islamic kingdom, including neighbouring Asir, which is only slightly larger with 1.8 million people.
In 2007, Jizan had around 122,000 internet users, compared to 287,000 in Asir, according to Banque Saudi Fransi, and Jizan has only 1,700 schools compared to its neighbour's 3,000.
Many hotels and service apartments in Jizan and other towns are packed with Saudis who have left border villages.
"We stayed first in the camp but luckily we have now been moved to an apartment. Civil defence is paying the bill," said Muhammad Abdullah Mighrishi.
Security forces are thick on the ground. Police at checkpoints on all main roads search some vehicles and passengers, focussing on traffic leaving Jizan.
Saudi Arabia is worried about infiltration by Yemen-based al Qaeda militants across mountainous border smuggling routes.
"I don't know when the situation will improve, I don't even know the reason for this war," Sharahili said in her tent as her children played outside. "We just hope we can go back quickly."
(Editing by Alistair Lyon)
