Saudi clerics have accused Yemeni Houthi Shias of working with Iran to try to spread Shi’ism, days before the start of the annual Muslim hajj pilgrimage.

“Iranian cooperation with Houthi Shias in Yemen is collusion for sin and aggression,” Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul-Aziz al-Sheikh said in remarks published on Monday.

Riyadh launched an assault on neighboring Yemen’s Houthi Shias 12 days ago after they staged a cross-border incursion that killed two Saudi border guards.

“Houthi entered our territories, so … it is obvious that they should be fought since the kingdom here is defending itself,” Sheikh said.

The Houthi Shias said the Saudis had been allowing Yemeni troops to launch attacks against them from the mountainous territory they seized inside Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter.

Saudi forces have been using fighter jets and artillery to pound Houthi hideouts to enforce a 10 km (six mile) deep buffer zone inside the Yemeni side of the porous border.

Iran boycotted hajj for three years after 402 pilgrims, mostly Iranians, martyred in clashes with Saudi security forces at an anti-U.S. and anti-Israel rally in Mecca in 1987.

Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally which sees itself as the guardian of Wahhabi Islam, has often been at odds with Shia Iran, particularly since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

In a statement issued over the weekend, about 40 Saudi clerics accused Iran “destabilizes Muslim nations by implanting, financing and arming its agents to spread” Shi’ism, a direct reference to Houthi Shias.

Both the Yemen government and the Shias have said that the conflict between them is not sectarian.

Yemen stepped up a military campaign against Houthi Shias in August. Fighting between Yemeni troops and Houthis, who belong to Yemen’s Zaidi Shia minority and say they suffer religious, economic and social marginalization and neglect and totally discrimination, has flared on and off since 2004 in the northern province of Saada.

Saudi Arabia and its ally, the United States, fear Shia are gaining the rule in Yemen.

There is just some pictures of Yemeni Shia civilians, where Saudi and Yemeni forces brutally attacked them. OH MY GOD, Just see and Judge????!!!