Saudi Arabia has said that three people including a pilot were killed in Thursday’s Houthi attacks on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport.
In a statement on social media on Friday, the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) said attacks on the airport killed an airline pilot and two other Saudi citizens, while several people “of different nationalities were wounded”.
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“It is with profound sadness that Saudia announces the passing of Captain Hamoud Ali Alkalthami,” the flag-carrier said in a statement, citing an “incident” at the Riyadh airport.
Dozens of people wounded in the missile attacks suffered minor to severe injuries. The attacks also caused material damage, including to a plane operated by national carrier Saudia, GACA said. Airport operations have now resumed and air traffic has returned to normal, according to Saudi media reports.
Saudi Arabia has seen several attacks by the Houthis in recent days, with the airports appearing to be the primary target.
GACA said Wednesday that attacks earlier in the week had killed three civilians and injured 36 at Abha and King Khalid airports. At least three people were also wounded in other attacks on Jazan and Najran airports near the Yemen border.
A Houthi military spokesperson said on Thursday that the armed group had launched a ballistic missile towards King Khalid Airport, claiming that the missile had successfully hit its intended target, causing damage and disrupting air traffic.
The Houthi military campaign appears to be a revival of a tactic seen last month. On September 18, Saudi-led coalition forces said they intercepted and destroyed a suspected Houthi ballistic missile fired towards King Khalid airport. A day later, at least one explosion was heard near the airport in Riyadh, and a large plume of black smoke was seen rising from a fuel storage area.
The Iran-backed Houthis, an armed group also known as Ansar Allah (Arabic for Supporters of God), have warned aviation companies to avoid using Saudi airspace, saying any aircraft operating there, except over the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, is a target.
Al Jazeera’s Yousef Mawry, reporting from Sanaa in Yemen, said the Houthis want to impose a blockade on all Saudi airports.
“This is part of the blockade-for-blockade equation, the airport-for-airport equation. Because Sanaa remains besieged by Saudi Arabia, the Ansar Allah Houthis want to impose a blockade on all Saudi airports”, Mawry said.
The Houthis say the strikes are in retaliation for Saudi attacks on Yemen’s Sanaa International Airport and the airport in Hodeidah, he said.
Fighting intensifies in Yemen
The resumption of attacks on Saudi Arabia’s airports comes as Yemeni forces continue a counteroffensive against the Houthis.
Late on Friday, air strikes were reported in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, which remains under the control of the Houthi movement, which seized the city in 2014.
Loud explosions were also reported in the southern port city of Aden, where the internationally-recognised Yemeni government is based.
The Saudi-led coalition supporting Yemen’s government also said on Friday that it had destroyed three rocket launch platforms that were used by the Houthis “to threaten regional security”.
Coalition spokesman Colonel Turki al-Maliki declared that all Houthi attacks on civilians and civilian facilities “will be met with resolve” by the Saudi-led coalition.
The push by Yemeni forces and the Saudi-led coalition was launched after the Iran-aligned rebel group last month seized a broad swath of territory in Yemen along the strategic Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, in a sudden push.
Yemeni government forces this week claimed key gains around the Bab al-Mandeb coastline, but intense fighting continues.
The conflict, which was frozen for years but reignited after the United States and Israel’s war on Iran, has stoked further upheaval in a region already destabilised by Israel’s wars on Gaza and Lebanon.
It now threatens to draw other states into the conflict, with Pakistan and Turkiye having agreed to deploy troops under a mutual defence pact signed with Saudi Arabia earlier this year.
Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Sajjad Haider Khan said on Friday that the country now has a “substantial number of forces as well as resources … in Riyadh”.
Pakistani military personnel “would not be crossing the borders of the other side for an attack on the Houthis, but of course [are acting] in the defence of the territory”, he noted.
UN Security Council members condemn Houthi attacks
Meanwhile, at the United Nations on Friday, Yemen’s internationally recognised government and Saudi Arabia asked the Security Council to take action to address the escalating situation in Yemen.
“The increasing targeting of civilians, the continuing threats to the security of navigation in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb Strait, and the resulting repercussions that extend beyond Yemen and the region negatively affect international peace and security,” Saudi Arabia’s UN representative, Abdulaziz al-Wasil, told the council.
Abdullah Ali Fadhel al-Saadi, the UN representative for Yemen’s internationally recognised government, said that the threat posed by the Houthis, “is no longer an internal Yemeni affair that can be contained within our borders”.