Special to WorldTribune.com

ABU DHABI — Saudi Arabia has deployed 30,000 troops to the Iraqi border.

A Saudi-owned satellite channel said the Saudi military deployed 30,000 soldiers to the Iraqi border.

Al Arabiya television said the Saudi deployment came after the Iraq Army withdrew from the 800-kilometer southern border with the Gulf Cooperation Council kingdom.

“We have not experienced any insecurity close to our border, and our
border is secured and protected long before the latest events in Iraq,”
Maj. Gen. Mansour Al Turki said.

Saudi Arabia, which in June arrested 62 suspected ISIL operatives, did
not confirm the Al Arabiya report on July 3. But Saudi sources said the
deployment began in late June and included troops from the National Guard
and Interior Ministry.

Iraq has denied that its military abandoned the border with Saudi
Arabia. But an Iraqi tribal spokesman, Abu Abdul Naami, said some 4,000
troops sent by the Shi’ite led government in Baghdad fled in face of the
advance by Sunni rebels.

Saudi Arabia’s neighbor, Bahrain, has also been on alert of an ISIL
advance. A leading Bahraini parliamentarian called on the GCC to send its
Peninsula Shield force to the Iraqi border.

“We should organize and coordinate with our allies, especially the Arab
nations Jordan and Egypt, to help secure the borders of Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait and Jordan,” Khalid Al Khalifa, chairman of the Shura Council on Foreign
Affairs and Defense Committee, said.

  000 troops to border with Iraq, ISIL, Maj. Gen. Mansour Al Turki, Report: Saudi deploys 30, Saudi National Guard