Houthi Attack on Riyadh Airport Kills 12, Wounds More Than 300 in Deadliest Strike on Saudi Arabia in Over a Decade

Riyadh: An attack by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi group on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh on Saturday killed at least 12 people and wounded 309 others, Saudi authorities said. It was the third attack on the airport this week, as the Houthis escalated the campaign against the kingdom they launched this summer.

According to the Saudi civil aviation authority, the dead included four Saudi nationals, two Bangladeshis, and one person each from the United States, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, Sudan and Egypt. Hospitals were flooded with wounded brought in by ambulance and helicopter, some of them in critical condition.

The attack was the deadliest in Saudi Arabia in more than a decade. It came without warning, as no alert was issued by the kingdom’s threat warning system. The two earlier attacks on the airport this week killed four people and badly damaged a Saudi commercial aircraft parked on the tarmac.

An eyewitness at the airport said there was an explosion, followed by several people lying injured on the ground inside the terminal. An injured traveller reported seeing an object fly across the sky outside before part of the ceiling near a departure gate collapsed. More than a dozen ambulances were seen rushing to the scene.

All flights to Riyadh were diverted or cancelled, and operations at the airport, which serves a city of about eight million people, were temporarily suspended. The head of the Houthi media office claimed on X that the group had shut down the airport. The Houthis have warned airliners to avoid Saudi airspace, declaring it a zone of military operations after the Saudi-backed Yemeni government launched an offensive against the group on Monday.

The Saudi-led military coalition has vowed to respond. Saudi Arabia is conducting an air campaign in support of the Yemeni government’s ground offensive, and the two have claimed hundreds of strikes on targets in Houthi-held territory. The Houthis say these strikes have killed civilians, including women and children, a claim that could not be independently verified.

Asked whether the United States would join the Saudi strikes on the Houthis, US President Donald Trump told reporters outside the White House: “We may. We’re going to look at it. We just found out about the recent attack, so we’ll make a decision. We move very quickly.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned the attacks, saying they showed a blatant disregard for innocent civilian life. The US Embassy in Riyadh strongly advised American citizens to avoid the airport and surrounding areas.

Saudi Arabia entered the Yemen war in 2015 at the head of an Arab coalition seeking to drive the Houthis from the capital, Sanaa, which the group had seized the previous year. The conflict reached a bloody stalemate, with hundreds of thousands of Yemenis killed by fighting and famine, before a 2022 deal between Riyadh and the Houthis froze the war. That ceasefire collapsed over the summer, ending in a rapid Houthi advance that captured the Bab el-Mandeb strait on the Red Sea from government forces. The government’s counter-offensive has so far made slow progress, while the Houthis have placed Taiz, Yemen’s third-largest city, under siege.

The attacks come shortly before Riyadh is due to host major energy and investment conferences. Several airlines had already suspended or cancelled flights to the Saudi capital after earlier attacks this week. The conference organisers said before Saturday’s strike that the events would go ahead as planned.