A projectile struck a passenger terminal at the international airport in Riyadh on Sunday, a day after a missile hit the same terminal and killed 12 people, the Saudi-led coalition fighting Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen said. The Houthis claimed responsibility for those attacks and others.
Saudi authorities said there were injuries in the latest attack on the King Khalid International Airport complex for terminals 3 and 4 for domestic flights. Saturday’s missile attack was the deadliest in a Gulf Arab nation since the Iran war began, with another 300 people wounded, some critically.
The sharp escalation in the new front in the Iran war threatens to draw in greater U.S. military involvement as U.S. President Donald Trump has said he is weighing joining the fight against the rebels.
The strike came shortly after the Houthis said the airport under their control in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa had been struck again. They blamed the Saudis but provided no details.
The strike on Sunday occurred as King Khalid International Airport remained closed and authorities moved schools in the capital online.
At stake, again, are global supplies and prices of oil, as well as commercial shipping through a crucial alternative waterway to the Iran-threatened Strait of Hormuz — along with civilians and aviation throughout the region.
WATCH | At least 12 people were killed in Saturday’s attack on Riyadh’s airport:
Another deadly strike on Saudi airport as Houthis escalate attacks
The latest attack on Riyadh’s international airport killed at least 12 people, officials said Saturday, as a Saudi-led coalition blamed Iran-backed Houthi rebels in neighbouring Yemen. The third attack this week on King Khalid International Airport also left more than 300 others injured.
Earlier Sunday, the Houthi-run Health Ministry reported that a child was killed and six people wounded in a suspected Saudi airstrike on a house in Sanaa. There was no immediate comment from Saudi authorities.
The ministry says 91 Yemenis have been killed and 168 injured by the Saudi-led coalition in five weeks. It said that 60 per cent of those killed were women and children.
Riyadh shutters airport, moves schools online
The kingdom said Sunday that schools in the capital would hold classes online until the end of the week. Meanwhile, authorities extended an ongoing airport closure until at least 9 p.m. local time Sunday, according to Flightradar24.
While the Houthis did not immediately claim responsibility for Saturday’s attack, they have acknowledged targeting Saudi airports and oil installations in the past.
Brig.-Gen. Yahya Saree, the group’s military spokesperson, warned “all airlines, experts, employees, workers and travellers against using Saudi airports and airspace, as they are vulnerable to attack and have become a theatre of operations for our forces.” He wrote on the social media platform X that airports in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina were exempt.
Saturday’s attack on the Saudi airport drew condemnations from Arab countries, including Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, as well as UN Secretary General António Guterres and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
“Attacks by Iran’s proxies are pushing the region into a spiral of violence,” von der Leyen wrote Sunday on X. “They are destabilizing crucial global transport and energy nodes.”
Details surface about airport fatalities
The Saturday attack struck an airport complex housing terminals 3 and 4 for domestic flights, a regional official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media.
A Saudi statement said the dead included four Saudi citizens, two Bangladeshi nationals, a Palestinian, a U.S. citizen, an Egyptian, a Jordanian, a Syrian and a Sudanese. It said several hospitals were treating the injured.
The Egyptian woman was a flight attendant identified as Azza Ramzy, 28, who worked for the Saudi airline Flynas, according to the Egyptian state-run TV.
The Syrian woman was a widowed mother of four who had been living in Saudi Arabia for five years, a relative told The Associated Press. The Syrian Embassy in Riyadh identified her as Buthaina Ahmad Oweida.
Her niece, Nisreen Oweida, said her aunt was 56 years old, from Syria’s northern Idlib province and had left during the country’s civil war. She was living in Mecca and had been returning from a visit to her sister in Riyadh when she was killed in the attack on the airport, her niece said.
Trump said he would consider joining strikes against rebels
Shortly after Saturday’s attack, Trump said he was evaluating whether the U.S. should join Saudi strikes against the rebels. “We’re going to look at it,” he said. “We just found out about the recent attack. So we’ll make a decision. We move very quickly.”
Trump said later he planned to speak with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Asked if the U.S. might get involved, Trump responded, “We’ll find out.”
People gather outside a metro station on the road to King Khalid airport in Riyadh on Saturday. (The Associated Press)
A U.S. attack would deepen American involvement in an unpopular regional war that has threatened Trump’s Republican party in upcoming U.S. midterm elections. Both Trump and Iran insist the American election calendar has no effect on their decisions on how to end the seven-month-old conflict.
The Houthis claimed attacks earlier in the week on King Khalid International Airport that killed three Saudis, including a pilot. The airport has no military facilities.
The surge in attacks, including against other Saudi airports, military facilities and oil infrastructure, has come in the week since a Saudi-led coalition launched a major military offensive against the Houthis.
Iran can use Houthis to pressure key U.S. ally
The latest fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis comes as negotiations between Iran and the U.S. aimed at ending their war appear to be at a standstill.
Until recently, the Houthis had been largely on the sidelines of the Iran war. Now, the rebels are helping Iran to pressure a key U.S. ally. Houthi attacks, along with their control of the Bab el-Mandeb waterway, also threaten to add new disruptions to the flow of oil from the region.
The Saudis and the Houthis began fighting in 2015, when the kingdom entered Yemen’s civil war on behalf of the internationally recognized government.
Relative calm after a 2022 ceasefire ended in July, when the Houthis resumed attacks, saying the Saudis fired on the Sanaa airport as a plane from Iran was trying to land. That revived anger over the Saudi-led blockade that has largely isolated Houthi-run areas.
Now fighting has escalated, with the Saudi-led coalition providing air support for Yemeni government forces attempting to reverse recent Houthi gains along the Red Sea. Those gains gave the rebels better surveillance of shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb, a corridor that is a crucial alternative to the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has been attacking ships.
Saudi Arabia is running low on missile interceptors and has asked France, Britain, Pakistan and Egypt to deploy air defense support to the region, regional officials told The Associated Press last month, with one noting that the U.S. has seen its own stock dwindle during the war with Iran.