Saudi authorities said on Wednesday evening that three people were killed and 36 others wounded in attacks on Abha airport and King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, according to the BBC. The Saudi General Authority of Civil Aviation did not name who carried out the strikes, the BBC reported.
The authority said one attack took place on Wednesday and the other on Tuesday, without giving further details. Yemen's Iran-backed Ansar Allah movement, known as the Houthis, had earlier said it struck both airports.
According to the Saudi civil aviation authority, the attack on Abha airport killed two foreign residents, one Egyptian and one Algerian, and wounded 28 people, among them residents of Bangladeshi and Filipino nationality. At King Khalid airport, a Sudanese resident was killed and eight people were wounded: five Saudis, two Egyptian residents and one Pakistani resident. Injuries ranged from light to severe, the same source said.
Why it matters
The strikes mark a rare case of confirmed deaths and injuries at Saudi civilian airports, and they land at the center of the kingdom's capital. Riyadh's airport is the country's main international gateway, while Abha serves the southwest, close to the Yemeni border.
The attacks also widen a conflict that has already drawn in shipping lanes and regional powers. The Arab League warned that continued Houthi escalation would prolong Yemen's crisis and threaten the security of neighboring states, according to Xinhua. The United Arab Emirates condemned what it described as continued Houthi targeting of civilians, civilian and economic sites in Saudi Arabia, as well as Saudi ships in the southern Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab strait. In a foreign ministry statement, the UAE called the strikes a flagrant violation of Saudi sovereignty and a threat to its security and stability, and expressed full solidarity with Riyadh.
Houthi claims and the Riyadh missile
The Houthis said on Wednesday that they targeted Riyadh airport with a ballistic missile, after Saudi Arabia announced it had intercepted a missile north of the capital. A Houthi spokesman said on the X platform that the group's armed forces struck King Khalid airport in Riyadh with a number of drones, causing a disruption to air traffic there, according to the BBC.
The flight-tracking site Flightradar24 reported temporary and repeated closures of the airport's airspace. It said flights bound for Riyadh circled in a holding area away from the airport for at least thirty minutes because landings had stopped, before operations resumed.
The Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen said earlier that it intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile fired by the Houthis at Riyadh, without explicitly mentioning King Khalid airport. Coalition spokesman Major General Turki al-Malki said the missile was intercepted and destroyed north of Riyadh, describing the launch as the work of what he called the terrorist Houthi militia. He said the coalition was tracking the launch platform with its intelligence system over Sanaa and would destroy it.
Aden airport hit as fighting widens
Two Houthi missiles also struck Aden International Airport in southern Yemen, according to the media office of Aden's security authority, which said no injuries were recorded. Yemen's Transport Ministry condemned the attack on what it described as the runway and passenger hall at the airport, saying the Houthis used two ballistic missiles and a number of explosive-laden drones.
The ministry said one of the missiles landed near the airport runway minutes before a flight from Cairo carrying civilian passengers was due to land. It said authorities took urgent and decisive measures to protect lives, including canceling the landing of a Yemenia flight from Cairo and diverting it to Jeddah. Two aircraft that were on the runway were evacuated and moved away from the danger zone in case of another strike, the ministry said.
The Houthi military spokesman, Yahya Saree, said the group targeted what he described as Saudi military supplies that had arrived at the Badr camp next to Aden airport using ballistic missiles, and said the attack killed and wounded a number of Saudi officers. After the airport strike was announced, Yemenia said it was continuing flights on its operating schedule while taking steps to choose the safest routes and make any operational changes conditions require, according to the Yemeni government's Saba news agency.
The Aden attack came as several Yemeni fronts see wide military escalation, alongside an offensive by Saudi-backed government forces to retake areas the Houthis seized in recent weeks, particularly on the western coast and around the Bab al-Mandab strait.
A widening toll
Saree said on Wednesday evening that Saudi Arabia carried out 156 airstrikes and missile attacks in the past 24 hours, targeting the capital Sanaa and the provinces of Taiz, Saada, al-Jawf, Marib and Amran. Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said in a televised speech on the group's al-Masirah channel on Wednesday that Saudi attacks had amounted to 1,642 airstrikes and missile bombardments against Yemen's infrastructure over three months.
Fighting in western Yemen on Wednesday killed at least 62 people, including 37 Houthis and more than 25 members of the internationally recognized Yemeni government's forces, according to military sources from both sides cited by Agence France-Presse. That raised the death toll on both sides since Monday to more than 330.
Separately, video recordings published by Yemeni government forces showed armored vehicles running over Houthi fighters during battles near Bab al-Mandab. Reuters said it verified the recordings, which were filmed from inside the armored vehicles and show vehicles striking men, some of them armed while others appeared unarmed, including people with their hands raised or sitting or lying on the ground.
The Houthis accused government forces of war crimes and said the recordings showed the "true nature" of the forces fighting them. A spokesman for the Giants Brigades, the main government force in the fighting around Bab al-Mandab, said the brigades were investigating the incident. He said the forces were told Houthi fighters were surrendering before some of them opened fire on government troops. The Saudi-led coalition did not immediately comment on the recordings or the accusations. The National Shield forces issued guidance to their fighters calling for prisoners to be treated well and for adherence to religious, moral and legal standards.
Fighting continued near Bab al-Mandab, one of the world's most important maritime shipping corridors, after government forces said they had retaken areas that fell under Houthi control last month.
What to watch next: whether the Saudi-led coalition names a response to the airport strikes, and whether flight operations at Riyadh and Abha remain uninterrupted as the fighting around Bab al-Mandab continues.
