At least 12 people were killed and 309 injured late Saturday when an attack hit King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, the kingdom’s deadliest assault in more than a decade. The dead came from nine countries: four Saudi citizens, two Bangladeshis, and one each from the United States, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, the Palestinian territories and Sudan. Some injured people remained in critical condition Sunday.
The victims weren’t soldiers. They were travelers and the workers who keep an airport running in a city of roughly 8 million people.
Civilian Toll
People briefed on the matter told Reuters that hospitals were flooded with wounded people brought by ambulance and helicopter. More than a dozen ambulances rushed to the facility, and Reuters verified a video showing them at the scene. An eyewitness said they saw an explosion, followed by multiple injured people lying on the terminal floor.
One injured traveller told Reuters they saw something fly across the sky before part of the ceiling near a departure gate collapsed. There was no warning. Saudi Arabia’s threat warning system issued no alert.
The General Authority of Civil Aviation said the injured were receiving care at several hospitals. Jordan’s foreign ministry said two injured Jordanians had been discharged, while two others remained in treatment.
It was the third strike on the airport in a week. Two earlier attacks killed four people and heavily damaged a Saudi commercial plane parked on the tarmac. After Saturday’s attack, authorities diverted all flights from Riyadh and temporarily suspended operations. Flight-tracking site flightradar24 showed every flight to the capital diverted or cancelled, with only a helicopter hovering over the airport at one point.
A Ceasefire Unravels
The Houthis hadn’t claimed responsibility by Sunday. The Iran-backed group has escalated a campaign it launched this summer against Saudi Arabia, and it had warned aviation companies to avoid Saudi airspace, saying aircraft operating there were targets except over the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
The attack came as fighting intensified inside Yemen. Majed Abdullah al-Nuzaili, spokesman for the internationally recognised government forces, said more than 1,900 operations in the previous 24 hours targeted weapons and ammunition depots, camps, military positions and reinforcements "deep within areas controlled" by the Houthis. Reuters reported that the Saudi-led coalition called the airport attack a "war crime" and said it would respond firmly.
Saudi Arabia entered the Yemen war in 2015, 11 years ago, leading an Arab coalition seeking to force the Houthis out of Sanaa. The Houthis had stormed the capital the previous year. The war reached a bloody stalemate, with hundreds of thousands of Yemenis killed by fighting and famine. A 2022 deal between Riyadh and the Houthis froze the conflict. That ceasefire unravelled over the summer, culminating in a rapid Houthi advance that took the Red Sea chokepoint of Bab el-Mandeb from Saudi-backed government forces. The Saudi-backed government has since begun an offensive to retake the territory, making slow gains, while the Houthis besiege Taiz, Yemen’s third-largest city.
Diplomatic Reaction
Asked outside the White House whether Washington would join Saudi strikes on the Houthis, President Donald Trump said: "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." He called the attack "a terrible thing," said he planned to speak with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and said the United States had communication with the Houthis.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that an American citizen had died. "These reprehensible attacks demonstrate a blatant disregard for innocent civilian life. They must stop now," he wrote on X.
Qatar’s foreign ministry called the attack "a direct threat to the security of the region." Former Qatari prime minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani said it was "more urgent than ever" to stand with Saudi Arabia and urged Gulf states to set aside "peripheral disputes." Japan and Egypt also condemned the strikes, with Egypt calling them a "flagrant violation" of international law.
The U.S. mission restricted employee travel, barring movement within 20 miles (32km) of the Yemeni border and requiring special authorisation for several Saudi provinces and cities. The UK and Irish embassies described "a serious incident," while Canada’s embassy cited "ongoing military activity."
The strikes also threaten Riyadh’s calendar. Several carriers had already suspended service after earlier attacks, shortly before the city was due to host major energy and investment conferences, including the World Petroleum Conference. Organisers said before Saturday’s strikes that the events would go ahead.
Why This Matters:
Civilians from nine countries were killed or wounded in a transit hall, not on a front line. The war’s costs now stretch far beyond Yemen’s borders.
Yemenis have already paid the heaviest price, with hundreds of thousands dead from fighting and famine. A siege of Taiz leaves residents of a major city exposed.
The collapse of a 2022 deal that froze the fighting shows how fragile negotiated pauses can be without a durable political settlement. Talk in Washington and Riyadh is turning to retaliation. History in this conflict suggests escalation tends to deepen civilian suffering on every side rather than end it. International condemnation is unanimous, but it hasn’t yet produced a mechanism to protect people in airports or besieged cities.