JEDDAH: On Oct. 8, Khaled Zaal was staring through the window of King Khalid International Airport at a parked Saudia aircraft, bored by a delay that had already stretched past two hours, when he saw a small ball of fire emerge silently from the top of the plane’s fuselage.
A fraction of a second later came another explosion, this one to his left, and then a blast loud enough to shake the whole concourse. Glass and ceiling fittings came down. Smoke and dust filled the air, and Zaal could barely see.
“The aircraft’s fuselage contained the first (blast) inside it, confining its destructive force and leaving it greatly weakened,” Zaal told Arab News. “The glass facing us did not shatter and was not affected. It shielded us from some of the shrapnel.”
His account is among the first detailed descriptions by a civilian of what happened inside the airport during the opening attack of a campaign waged by Yemen’s Houthi militia that has since killed many more.
Two days later, on Oct. 10, a missile strike on the same airport killed 12 people and wounded 309, among them Umrah pilgrims, according to the General Authority of Civil Aviation. A further strike on terminal four the following day killed a Pakistani national and injured 11 others, and the airport’s operations were suspended for days.
Zaal, a media producer, had arrived early on the morning of Oct. 8 for the 1:15 p.m. flight to AlUla, where he was due to begin filming a project the next day. He had travelled to Riyadh two days earlier with his mother, who was attending appointments at a cardiology clinic.
At the gate he ran into Bandar Salem, a relative who lives in AlUla and was booked on the same flight with his wife and young daughter. The departure time came and went without a boarding call. When Zaal asked a member of staff whether the flight might be cancelled, as the Qaisumah service had been, he was told most flights were being delayed.
After the noon prayer, the gate was moved to the ground floor, level with the apron. Zaal walked the length of the terminal to reach it and sat down beside Salem on seats in the corridor, a few meters from the waiting area, with the glass wall and the aircraft in front of them.
An elderly man and woman, both in wheelchairs, came and waited beside them.
What followed, by Zaal’s account, lasted no more than eight minutes.
He stood and walked toward the worst-hit area while Salem went the other way; the two were separated from that moment. A second strike had hit airport facilities to his left.
“I said to myself: ‘The terrorist Houthi militia have attacked the airport, and I fear another strike may follow,’” he said. “But (then) I said, with full confidence and faith, that it would not happen.”
He began calling out for people to move. A group of women and children came toward him, he said, showing signs of panic. “They saw in me a place of safety and (as) the help they had been waiting for.”
He led them to a spot he judged large enough to hold them and began evacuating. They had covered only a short distance when two more explosions sounded, weaker than the first, but enough to make several of the children scream. He moved the group into an adjacent area and struck the wall with his hand to satisfy himself it was solid concrete.
Among those sheltering, he recognized the Bangladeshi woman from the corridor. He did not see the man who had been with her. “I had memorized the faces over the long wait,” he said. “I saw terror, fear and panic in their faces.”
A third explosion followed, which he realized was burning fuel from the aircraft. When the smoke began to clear, he went back toward the damaged area, shouting at people to leave, until airport staff and a specialist team reached the site and took over the evacuation.
He left with everyone else, unhurt. Clear of the danger, he remembered that Salem had his family with him and called repeatedly until he answered. All three were safe.
Zaal did not tell his mother. He went to his brother-in-law’s house, greeted her and drank afternoon coffee without mentioning it, concerned that she would worry about a flight they were booked on for Oct. 17.
After the Oct. 10 attack, he abandoned the idea of flying at all. He told her what had happened five days after the event. She replied: “The most important thing is that you are well and here with me.”
Three people were killed in the attack that Zaal survived, including a pilot, Capt. Hammoud Al-Kalthami.
“We are all innocent victims of a terrorist attack that distinguishes between no one, young or old,” Zaal said.
He had not intended to publish his account, he said, in compliance with instructions from the security authorities not to circulate material about the incident. He changed his mind after authorities released footage of the Oct. 10 strike and the killing of Umrah pilgrims.
Before moving into the media industry, Zaal was, he said, a member of the Saudi security forces at the Ministry of Interior, where he specialized in special duties and riot control. He said his experience at the airport had not affected his sleep or his concentration. But he was careful not to generalize, adding: “There will certainly be those who are affected by this incident — whether physically, through injury, or psychologically, in a way that may stay with them for days, or weeks, or for life.”
He also had a request for anyone inclined to romanticize what he went through.
“I would ask everyone not to wish for, or dream of, finding themselves in a situation like the one I and others went through, simply so that they can write about it and boast of it,” he said. “Whoever survived and came out safely did not do so by their own merit, courage or intelligence.”