Riyadh airport came under fresh attack on Sunday, the Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen’s Houthis said, a day after a strike blamed on the group killed 12 people.
Coalition spokesman Major General Turki al-Maliki said an unidentified projectile struck Terminal 4 at King Khalid International Airport, causing a fire, and that the relevant authorities were responding at the scene.
He added in a post on X that air defences had “intercepted and destroyed” a cruise missile near the airport.
Earlier, AFP journalists heard a powerful explosion in central Riyadh, while three residents in the city’s north later reported hearing another blast.
“The birds went into a frenzy after the sound. The whole house shook,” a resident of the Al-Aarid neighbourhood in northern Riyadh told AFP.
Residents also said they saw ambulances heading towards the airport, which lies in the northeast of the capital.
A Riyadh Metro official told AFP that the capital’s authorities had suspended transit service to two of the three stations serving the airport. The official said the decision would be “reviewed on a daily basis”.
Saturday’s attack on Riyadh airport was a sharp escalation in the Yemen war, where Saudi Arabia backs the internationally recognised government against the Houthis, who captured swathes of Red Sea coastline in a lightning offensive last month.
Meanwhile, Yemen’s Houthis warned airlines, travellers and airport workers on Sunday to stay away from Saudi airports.
“We renew our warning to all airlines, experts, employees, workers and travellers against using Saudi airports and airspace, as they are vulnerable to attack and have become a theatre of operations for our forces, with the exception of the airports in (the holy cities of) Makkah and Madinah,” the Houthis said in a post on X.
“We urge everyone to take our warnings seriously, and Saudi Arabia bears responsibility for any failed interceptions.”
Saudi Arabia has stepped up its military involvement in Yemen in recent weeks, launching strikes against the Houthis and backing a Yemeni government counteroffensive after the group seized strategic territory along the Red Sea coast last month.
Yemen’s Houthi-run foreign ministry said on Sunday that further Saudi military action in Yemen would trigger a stronger response, adding that its actions would be guided by the principle of reciprocity.
“Unless the Saudi enemy stops its aggression and interference in Yemen, worse is yet to come, God willing,” the ministry said in statements carried by Houthi-run Al Masirah television.
President Donald Trump said on Saturday the United States was considering joining Saudi strikes on the Houthis in the conflict, a spillover from the wider war on Iran that the US and Israel launched in February.
The Saudi-led coalition said on Saturday that a projectile had also fallen near King Fahd International Airport in Dammam, in the kingdom’s Eastern Province. The coalition also reported intercepting a drone in the region on Sunday.
The two previous attacks on King Khalid International Airport this week killed ?four and caused heavy damage to a Saudi commercial plane parked on the tarmac. The strikes have exposed vulnerabilities in Saudi defence capabilities as it wages an air campaign against the Houthis to support a ground war by the Yemeni government against the group.
The Houthis have not claimed responsibility for the attack.
Trump, asked whether the US planned to join Saudi strikes on the Houthis, told reporters: “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.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned the attacks on the airport, saying they “demonstrate a blatant disregard for innocent civilian life”.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also condemned Saturday’s strike, reiterating that attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure violate international law and must cease immediately.
Saudi Arabia and the Yemeni government have claimed hundreds of strikes on targets in Houthi-held territory. The Houthis have said these killed civilians, including women and children. Reuters could not independently verify those claims.
The Saudis entered the Yemen war in 2015 at the head of an Arab coalition to try to force the Houthis out of the Yemeni capital ?Sanaa. The war became a bloody stalemate, with hundreds of thousands of Yemenis killed by fighting and famine.
A 2022 ceasefire reached by the Saudis and the Houthis unravelled this summer, culminating in a lightning Houthi advance that took the Red Sea chokepoint of Bab el-Mandeb from Saudi-backed government forces.
Yemen’s government-aligned forces said they destroyed five armoured military vehicles belonging to the Houthi group while repelling an attempted advance toward Dhubab Airport in Yemen’s western Taiz province.