PILGRIMS in Saudi Arabia may not have anticipated being caught up in an air war, but some experienced an attack by Yemen's Houthis first-hand and others have been forced to change their plans.
Footage of the blast that killed 13 people and wounded 300 in a Riyadh airport departure terminal struck on Saturday showed many passengers attired in the simple white clothes of Muslim pilgrims travelling to Makkah.
Saudi media reported that a Bangladeshi imam leading a group of dozens of pilgrims was killed and others wounded in the attack.
While the Houthis have promised not to attack Makkah and Madinah, the two holiest places in Islam that attract millions of pilgrims each year, they are targeting other Saudi airports in what they call retaliation for Saudi attacks on them.
"I feel deeply worried for my family and myself," said Fadi Anwar, a Jordanian living in Makkah.
"We constantly receive warnings (phone alerts from the authorities) and it causes us great anxiety."
Saudi officials have said the kingdom is safe and that the security of visitors is valued above all else, an offer of reassurance even as Western governments have warned against using most Saudi airports.
Although most international pilgrims fly directly into Madinah or Jeddah airports, many others travel via Saudi Arabia's other main air hubs, including the many pilgrims who already live in the kingdom.
Al Amin Hassan Mohammed from Sudan, who was visiting Saudi-based family members before a pilgrimage to Makkah, said he had been in Riyadh during Saturday's attack, which sent him and neighbours onto the street.
"We were tired and worried. We went out of the houses and we talked with each other," he said.
Mohammed, who has a married daughter in Saudi Arabia's city of Dammam, close to Dhahran where the Houthis targeted a Saudi Arabian Oil Company building on Tuesday, has made the pilgrimage to Makkah before.
The vast courtyard of the enormous main mosque in Makkah was a swirl of pilgrims in their white robes on Tuesday, as they circled the Kaabah, the point towards which all Muslims face to pray.
Makkah draws millions of people each year, both during haj and for umrah, from both inside Saudi Arabia and overseas, and the attacks have made some nervous.
The strikes between Saudi Arabia and the Iran-allied Houthis, resulting from the reignition of Yemen's civil war as a spillover from the United States-Iran conflict, have caused Saudi Arabia to ground many flights.
Schools in Riyadh have been switched to online learning this week and some offices have told staff to work from home.
The disruption has been particularly acute for those trying to travel, a group that includes pilgrims, business figures attending Saudi Arabia's many high-profile conferences, Saudi tourists wishing to go on holiday and foreign residents wanting to fly home.
"We've had some trips postponed. We had friends who were travelling; it was delayed, they didn't travel," said Mohammed.
His friends had been planning to fly via Riyadh but in the end they took a boat back to Sudan from Jeddah, he said.
A senior executive Reuters spoke to on Wednesday was busy arranging transport for foreign employees, sending them by road to Doha in Qatar for onward flights.
A diplomat in Riyadh said several embassies had also used Doha for trips to and from Saudi Arabia over recent days, including for staff temporarily leaving with their families.
The representative of a company organising transport to Doha and Dubai said fares to those destinations had doubled.
Being prepared to pay is no guarantee of travel — in the early phases of the US-Iran war, Iranian fire grounded many flights around the Gulf and that direct conflict may erupt again with US President Donald Trump threatening to resume strikes.
The writer is from Reuters
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