Houthi strike on Saudi airport kills 12, worst attack on kingdom in a decade

• Houthi attack on Riyadh airport kills at least 12 and wounds more than 300, Saudi authorities say. The dead included Saudis and foreign nationals, and some wounded were in critical condition.
• The strike shut down airport operations, diverted all flights and exposed weak points in Saudi air defences. Witnesses saw explosions, injured travellers and many ambulances rushing in.
• The Houthis claimed the attack and said they had “shut down Riyadh international airport”. The US said it was aware of the attacks, while airlines cancelled flights and major Riyadh summits still planned to go ahead.

RIYADH – At least 12 people were killed and more than 300 wounded in an attack on Riyadh’s international airport on Oct 10, the deadliest in the kingdom in more than a decade, as the Iran-backed Houthis escalate a campaign they launched this summer.

The dead included four Saudis, two people from Bangladesh and one person each from the US, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, Sudan and Egypt, the Saudi civil aviation authority said. At the latest count, 309 were wounded, officials said.

US President Donald Trump said Washington was considering joining Saudi strikes on the Houthis in the conflict, a spillover from the war on Iran that the US and Israel launched in February.

Hospitals were flooded with wounded people brought by ambulance and helicopter, people briefed on the matter said. Some were in critical condition.

The Oct 10 attack, the deadliest in the kingdom in more than a decade, occurred without warning, with no alert issued by Saudi Arabia’s threat warning system. Two previous attacks on King Khalid International Airport left four people dead and caused heavy damage to a Saudi commercial plane parked on the tarmac.

The deadly strikes exposed vulnerabilities in the kingdom’s defence capabilities as it wages an air campaign against the Houthis to support a ground war by the Yemeni government against the Iran-backed group.

The Houthis have not claimed responsibility for the attack, but a Saudi-led military coalition vowed to respond.

Saudi Arabia and the Yemeni government have claimed hundreds of strikes on targets in Houthi-held territory. The Houthis have said these killed civilians including women and children.

All flights were diverted from Riyadh on Oct 10, and operations at the airport that serves a city of roughly eight million people were temporarily suspended, the Saudi civil aviation authority said.

The head of the Houthi media office said in a post on X after the attack that the group had “shut down Riyadh international airport”. The Houthis have said airliners should avoid Saudi airspace, declaring it a zone of military operations after the Saudi-backed Yemeni government launched an offensive against the group on Oct 5.

US President Donald Trump, speaking to reporters outside the White House, was asked whether Washington planned to join Saudi strikes on the Houthis.

“We may. We’re going to look at it. We just found out about the recent attack, so we’ll make a decision,” he said.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned the attacks, saying they “demonstrate a blatant disregard for innocent civilian life”.

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres also condemned the strike, reiterating that attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure violate international law and must cease immediately.

Eyewitness saw wounded on the ground

One eyewitness at the airport on Oct 10 reported seeing an explosion and then multiple people lying injured inside. More than a dozen ambulances were seen rushing towards the facility.

An injured traveller said he saw something fly across the sky outside the airport before part of the ceiling near a departure gate collapsed.

The US embassy in Riyadh said it was “aware of attacks” and “strongly recommends all US citizens avoid this airport and surrounding areas”.

Saudi Arabia entered the Yemen war in 2015 at the head of an Arab coalition to try to force the Houthis out of the Yemeni capital Sanaa. The Houthis had stormed Sanaa the previous year, pushing out government forces.

The war was fought to a bloody stalemate, with hundreds of thousands of Yemenis killed by fighting and famine. Saudi Arabia struck a 2022 deal with the Houthis, freezing the conflict.

That ceasefire unravelled over the summer, culminating in a lightning Houthi advance that took the Red Sea chokepoint of Bab el-Mandeb from Saudi-backed government forces.

The Saudi-backed Yemeni government began an offensive this week to try to retake that territory, which has so far made slow gains, even as the Houthis put the country’s third-largest city, Taiz, under siege.

Riyadh due to hold major summits

Flight-tracking site flightradar24 showed all flights to Riyadh had either been diverted or cancelled, with only a helicopter hovering over the airport at one point.

Kuwait Airways said it had cancelled flights to and from the Saudi capital due to what it described as the closure of Riyadh airport because of the “security situation” there.

Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways earlier cancelled multiple flights between their respective hubs and Riyadh, with some cancellations extending into Oct 12.

Houthi attacks on Oct 8 and earlier had already prompted a number of carriers to suspend or cancel services to the Saudi capital, shortly before Riyadh is due to host major energy and investment conferences.

Organisers of those conferences said on Oct 10 they would go ahead as planned and they sought to reassure attendees of their security. REUTERS