Saudi Arabia's aviation authority said three people were killed in strikes on two of the kingdom's airports, according to Spiegel. The attacks hit Riyadh and Abha, in the southwest of the country, in two separate incidents on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The Houthi militia in Yemen had repeatedly claimed responsibility for strikes on both airports before the Saudi statement, Spiegel reports. On Monday, the group said it had fired a ballistic missile at Abha International Airport.
In Abha, two women — one from Algeria and one from Morocco — were killed, and 28 other people were wounded, including Saudi citizens, the aviation authority said in a statement posted on X. At Riyadh airport, one person was killed, a Sudanese national, and eight others were injured. Both attacks also caused property damage, the authority said, without giving further details.
The Saudi statement did not say where the fire came from. The Houthis are backed by Iran, while the kingdom is allied with Yemen's internationally recognized government and has repeatedly bombed targets belonging to the Shia militia.
Why it matters
The strikes mark a renewed escalation in a conflict that had been largely quiet. According to Spiegel, the latest fighting has revived Yemen's civil war after a four-year ceasefire. The United Nations says nearly 1,000 people have been killed and more than 200,000 displaced in the recent combat.
The violence also carries risks beyond Yemen's borders. Saudi Arabia is the world's largest oil exporter, and oil and military facilities there have been attacked in recent days, Spiegel reports. That threatens an important alternative shipping route to the Strait of Hormuz, where vessel traffic is already restricted because of the Iran war.
A ceasefire that did not hold
The Houthis had stepped up attacks on targets in neighboring Saudi Arabia as the Yemen conflict intensified again, according to Spiegel. On the other side, Yemeni government forces began an offensive on Sunday that they say is aimed at retaking all areas held by the Houthis.
The scale of the displacement and casualties reported by the UN points to how quickly the situation has deteriorated after four years without open war. Aid agencies have warned in the past that Yemen's infrastructure and health system remain fragile after years of conflict, though no new humanitarian assessment was included in the reporting.
Competing accounts and unclear targets
The Saudi aviation authority's statement left a central question unanswered: who carried out the strikes. The Houthis had claimed them beforehand, but the Saudi announcement did not confirm the source of the fire. That gap between the two accounts is consistent with a conflict in which claims and denials have often outpaced verified information, as German broadcaster tagesschau noted in its own coverage of the war.
What is clear from the Saudi statement is the toll: three dead across two airports, 36 wounded in total, and damage at both sites. The dead include a Sudanese man in Riyadh and two North African women in Abha. The wounded in Abha include Saudi nationals, according to the authority.
The targeting of civilian airports is significant because both Riyadh and Abha handle international traffic. Abha, in particular, has been a repeated target of Houthi claims in the past, and Monday's statement from the militia about a ballistic missile aimed at its international airport fit that pattern.
A wider war with regional stakes
The exchange of attacks reflects the broader alignment behind Yemen's war. The Houthis, a Shia movement, receive support from Iran. Saudi Arabia, a Sunni kingdom, backs the internationally recognized Yemeni government and conducts its own airstrikes against the militia. That structure has drawn in regional powers and made the conflict resistant to settlement.
Spiegel's coverage also noted the economic dimension. Attacks on Saudi oil and military sites in recent days put at risk an alternative shipping corridor to the Strait of Hormuz. With traffic through Hormuz already limited by the Iran war, any disruption to the alternative route would add pressure to global oil flows. Saudi Arabia's role as the world's largest oil exporter makes that risk more than a local concern.
The UN figures — close to 1,000 dead and over 200,000 displaced in the latest fighting — suggest the human cost is already substantial. The four-year ceasefire had offered a period of relative calm; its collapse has been rapid.
What to watch
The immediate question is whether the strikes on Riyadh and Abha mark a sustained campaign or a single round of retaliation. The Houthis have claimed further attacks, and Yemeni government forces say their offensive will continue until all Houthi-held territory is retaken. Whether the Saudi-led coalition responds with its own intensified bombing — and whether shipping and oil infrastructure become regular targets — will determine how far the escalation spreads beyond Yemen's borders.
