At least 12 people were killed and 309 injured in an attack late Saturday, October 10, at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, as fighting between Yemen’s internationally recognised government forces and the Iran-backed Houthis escalated. By Sunday, the Houthi group hadn’t claimed responsibility. Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation authority said it diverted all flights and temporarily suspended airport operations.
The General Authority of Civil Aviation said those killed included four Saudi citizens, two Bangladeshis, one American, one Egyptian, one Jordanian, one Syrian, one Palestinian and one Sudanese. Some injured people remained in critical condition, while hospitals treated all those hurt. People briefed on the matter told Reuters that ambulances and helicopters brought so many wounded people to hospitals that they were flooded with patients.
An eyewitness said they saw an explosion, then multiple injured people on the ground inside the airport. More than a dozen ambulances rushed to the facility. Reuters verified a video showing ambulances there. An injured traveller told Reuters they saw something fly across the sky before part of the ceiling near a departure gate collapsed.
Airport attacks and disruption
The attack, which came without warning, was the deadliest in the kingdom in more than a decade. Saudi Arabia’s threat warning system issued no alert. Two earlier attacks on the airport that week killed four people and heavily damaged a Saudi commercial plane parked on the tarmac.
King Khalid airport serves a city of roughly 8 million people. Flight-tracking site flightradar24 showed that all flights to Riyadh had been diverted or cancelled, with only a helicopter hovering over the airport at one point. Kuwait Airways said it was cancelling flights because the airport had closed due to a “security situation.”
Earlier Saturday, the airport advised passengers to contact their airlines and check flight status before travelling. It cited air-traffic disruptions but didn’t specify their cause. Houthi attacks on Thursday and earlier in the week had already led a number of carriers to suspend or cancel services to the Saudi capital. Riyadh was due to host major energy and investment conferences, including the World Petroleum Conference. Organisers said before Saturday’s strikes that the conferences would proceed as planned.
The Houthis had warned aviation companies to avoid Saudi airspace, saying aircraft operating there were targets except over the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The group hadn’t claimed responsibility for the latest attack.
Fighting across Yemen
Majed Abdullah al-Nuzaili, spokesman for the government forces, said more than 1,900 operations in the previous 24 hours targeted weapons and ammunition depots, camps, military positions, reinforcements and other “military objectives deep within areas controlled” by the Houthis. The Saudi-led coalition called the airport attack a “war crime” and said it would respond firmly, Reuters reported.
Saudi Arabia entered the Yemen war in 2015 at the head of an Arab coalition seeking to force the Houthis out of Sanaa, Yemen’s capital. The Houthis had stormed Sanaa the previous year, pushing government forces out. The war reached a bloody stalemate. Fighting and famine killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis.
Saudi Arabia reached a deal with the Houthis in 2022 that froze the conflict. The 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. That week, the Saudi-backed Yemeni government began an offensive to retake the territory, making slow gains, while the Houthis besieged Taiz, the country’s third-largest city.
Diplomatic response
Asked outside the White House whether Washington would join Saudi strikes on the Houthis, United States 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 said he planned to speak with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and that the United States had communication with the Houthis.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States strongly condemned recent attacks on Saudi Arabia and that an American citizen had been killed. “These reprehensible attacks demonstrate a blatant disregard for innocent civilian life. They must stop now,” Rubio wrote on X.
The U.S. mission in Riyadh recommended that U.S. citizens avoid the airport and surrounding areas. It said U.S. government employees needed special authorisation to use King Khalid airport and airports in Jeddah and Dammam, and must not travel within 20 miles (32km) of the Yemeni border. The UK and Irish embassies described “a serious incident” at the airport; Canada’s embassy advised people in Riyadh to avoid all travel there, citing “ongoing military activity.”