Riyadh Airport attack kills 12, injures 309

At least 12 people were killed and 309 others injured in a strike on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport international airport on Saturday, Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation officials said. A diplomatic source accused the attack on Yemen's Houthi movement.

Four Saudi citizens were among those killed, along with two Bangladeshis, one US citizen, one Egyptian, one Jordanian, one Syrian, one Palestinian and one Sudanese, according to the statement. Some of the injured were in serious condition.

The Houthis claimed responsibility for a series of strikes targeting the airport on Thursday that killed three people and damaged an aircraft. They did not immediately claim responsibility for any new attacks on Saturday.

The Iran-backed Houthis have launched an unprecedented wave of attacks against Saudi Arabia, targeting airports, oil facilities and tankers since a truce in their long-running conflict with Yemen’s Saudi-backed government collapsed in July.

Operations at the sprawling King Khalid International Airport were suspended following the strike, the Saudi civil aviation authority said earlier. The extent of the damage was still being assessed.

The attack also prompted health officials to issue an unusual mass call-up of doctors to respond to what a medical source described as a ‘serious emergency situation’.

Foreign embassies urged their citizens to stay away from the airport.

A passenger told AFP they had witnessed a strike at the airport’s domestic terminal.

‘I was on gate 403,’ the passenger said. ‘I saw 401 hits, I saw injured in front of my eyes. Everyone was running.’

Hours after the Riyadh attack, a spokesman for the Saudi-led international coalition fighting the Houthis in Yemen said in a post on X that a ‘projectile had landed near King Fahd International Airport in Dammam.
Early on Sunday, the coalition said it had intercepted a missile southeast of the Saudi capital.

Two doctors told AFP that several pilgrims travelling to Mecca were among those injured.

Yemen's civil war resumed in July after a four-year truce brokered by the United Nations collapsed. The fighting has unfolded amid a wider war in the Middle East that has disrupted the region and unsettled energy supplies and markets.

Saudi Arabia has led an international coalition supporting Yemen’s government militarily since 2015 and is now becoming more deeply involved in the conflict in its impoverished neighbour.

Asked on Saturday whether he had reconsidered joining Saudi strikes against the Houthis, US President Donald Trump said, ‘We may’.

‘We’re going to look at it, Trump told reporters at the White House. We just found out about the recent attack, so we’ll decide.

Near the airport, passengers carrying luggage were seen standing on the pavement at a metro station.
The attack came on the eve of Saudi Arabia’s high-profile convention and entertainment season, which begins this month. Riyadh typically hosts a packed schedule of events, including its flagship investment conference, which attracts foreign leaders and prominent business figures.