Saudi Arabia is constructing a 965-km high-tech “great wall” – a security barrier consisting of a sand berm and two chainlink fences topped by razor wire – along its border with Iraq, said a report.

The Northern Border Security Project is a five-layer fencing, some of which is 125-ft long with a ditch to separate the country from Iraq to the north, reported The Telegraph.

The fences will be 100 m apart with a third concertina fence in the gap between them.

An intruder alarm system will be provided by underground movement sensors, and 40 watchtowers equipped with night vision, thermal imaging cameras and radar supplied by Airbus industries.

These Spexer 2,000 radars can detect a truck 36 km away, and a pedestrian from a distance of 18 km, stated the report. To co-ordinate the information from the sensors, there will be seven command-and-control centres and 38 communications towers connected by a 1,450-km-long fibre-optic network to each other and the Ministry of the Interior in Riyadh. And to provide the response force, there will be 240 armoured cars backed up by helicopter gunships that will use a specially constructed patrol road running parallel with the fence.

The kingdom is also building a 1,000-km barrier across its frontier with Yemen.