The US has ordered non-essential employees and their families out of Saudi Arabia, citing a surge in Houthi attacks.
State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott announced the Saudi order in a post on X. It covers “non-emergency US government employees and their family members in Saudi Arabia only”, he said.
He denied the move was extended to US diplomatic families in the wider region. That was in response to wire agencies claiming diplomatic relatives in UAE, Jordan, Qatar and Bahrain were to leave.
Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation authority later reported an attack late on Wednesday evening on King Fahd International Airport in Dammam. One person was killed and eight were injured, it said.
Earlier on Wednesday, two people died when Saudi air defences intercepted a drone aimed at a facility at Saudi Aramco’s Shaybah oilfield, the energy ministry said.
Oil advanced on news of the airport attack. Brent climbed above $110 a barrel and West Texas Intermediate traded around $98.
Mr Pigott said the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen had “increasingly engaged in hostilities against Saudi Arabia”, including strikes on civilian airports that caused deaths and “severe travel disruptions”.
The General Authority of Civil Aviation said the airport had been targeted. Flight-tracking service Flightradar24 reported that operations at the airport had been halted since about 11.15pm local time.
This is inaccurate. The U.S. Department of State issued an ordered departure for non-emergency U.S. government employees and their family members in Saudi Arabia only.
— Tommy Pigott (@statedeptspox) October 21, 2026
Iranian-supported Houthis have increasingly engaged in hostilities against Saudi Arabia, including attacks on… https://t.co/yNrCwDcfIg
Mr Pigott called reports of a Gulf-wide order “inaccurate”. But four US officials told Reuters that missions in other Gulf states would also order family members to depart.
A diplomatic source told AFP that families in the UAE, Jordan, Qatar and Bahrain had been told to leave. The State Department has not confirmed either account.
The US mission in the UAE warned on Sunday that the hostilities “have the potential to escalate rapidly beyond that immediate area”.
The US embassy in Riyadh issued a security alert on Wednesday warning of possible further Houthi attacks. It followed recent deadly strikes, including one on Riyadh’s airport, according to the report.
Washington had sent some diplomatic staff back to the region in recent months.
Many were pulled out after Iran attacked US facilities when the US-Israeli war on Iran began in late February, including the Riyadh embassy and a CIA station in the Saudi capital.
The latest departures follow an escalation of fighting in Yemen. That has opened another front in a regional conflict that has snarled global energy trade and hurt Gulf economies.