Two Houthi attacks on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport have killed three Saudi nationals, including a pilot, Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation authority said, after Yemen’s Iran-aligned group claimed it launched strikes against the facility.
The attacks also left “a number of Saudi citizens and residents of various nationalities” injured, the General Authority of Civil Aviation said in a statement posted on X.
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The authority said the first strike on Thursday hit the airport, while the second targeted an aircraft operated by national carrier Saudia.
Saudia said one of the pilots was among those killed.
Flight operations at the airport had since returned to normal, according to the civil aviation authority.
The Houthis said they fired two ballistic missiles at the Riyadh airport on Thursday.
The group also claimed attacks on an airport in Najran, near Saudi Arabia’s border with Yemen, and Khamis Mushait air base farther north. Saudi authorities have not confirmed those strikes.
The new deaths came after three people were killed in Houthi attacks on two Saudi airports on October 6 and 7.
Two people were killed and 28 wounded in Wednesday’s attack on Abha International Airport, the civil aviation authority said. A separate strike at Riyadh’s King Khalid airport killed one person.
The latest incidents have unfolded as fighting intensifies between Yemen’s Saudi-backed government forces and the Houthis, who control much of the country’s northwestern territory.
The Houthi military spokesman said the earlier attacks on Saudi airports were carried out in “response to the Saudi aggression against our country”, which the group said included “60 air strikes and missile attacks in the past 24 hours”.
The Houthis say their attacks on Saudi targets are retaliation for Riyadh’s backing of government forces in Yemen’s civil war.
The conflict has deteriorated further in recent weeks after Houthi fighters rapidly captured strategically important sections of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline.
The offensive included the port of Mokha on the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the Red Sea’s narrowest point and a crucial route for international shipping.
Yemeni forces supporting the government have since said they had “secured” the Bab al-Mandab Strait at the southern entrance to the Red Sea.
Saudi Arabia established a coalition in 2015, joining with other Arab countries in an effort to prevent the Houthis from overthrowing Yemen’s internationally recognised government.
A temporary ceasefire was negotiated in 2022, following years of air raids and ground combat that killed hundreds of thousands of people and helped create one of the world’s gravest humanitarian crises.
That informal truce, however, began to break down in July.
The Houthis then declared a “maritime embargo” on Saudi Arabia and launched missile and drone strikes against Saudi airports, oil installations and tankers in the Red Sea. The group said the attacks were retaliation for what it described as a years-long Saudi blockade and an air strike on Sanaa airport.
