TEHRAN — Riyadh’s airport was hit again on Saturday, two days after Yemeni missiles killed three Saudis there. Regional officials told the Associated Press that air traffic stopped and the airport was evacuated.
A hospital source told Euronews that dozens were injured, at least five in intensive care. Riyadh confirmed the strike by evening but Sanaa had yet to claim it. Three Western embassies warned citizens away, and Kuwait Airways scrapped its Riyadh flights.
Thursday set the pattern. Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation authority admitted two attacks on King Khalid International Airport, one on facilities and one on a Saudia aircraft, that killed Captain Hamoud Ali Alkalthami and two other Saudis. CNN verified images of smoke over Terminal 4.
Brigadier General Yahya Saree said Yemeni forces also fired on Najran airport and a Saudi air base. Earlier strikes on Abha and Riyadh airports had already killed three and wounded 36, by Riyadh’s own count.
The commercial damage came fast. Cirium counted 169 of 378 scheduled Riyadh departures cancelled or not operating by late Thursday afternoon, nearly 45 percent.
Lufthansa grounded its Riyadh service through October 16. Turkish Airlines dropped all four departures. Air India, IndiGo and Philippine Airlines followed, and European regulators extended their warnings to Riyadh, Tabuk, Medina and Yanbu.
Saree told airlines, for the last time, that Saudi airspace outside the holy cities is a theater of operations.
Sanaa describes all this as reciprocity. Saudi jets bombed Sanaa International Airport on July 13, after Riyadh threatened Yemen over a flight to Tehran. Human Rights Watch found three munitions on the only working runway, the first coalition strikes since the 2022 truce.
Sanaa declared a blockade of Saudi ports a week later. On Saturday Al Masirah reported four more raids on it. Al Jazeera’s Yousef Mawry, reporting from Sanaa, called it an “airport-for-airport equation.”
Riyadh’s answer is “Dawn of Yemen,” the offensive its Yemeni clients launched last Sunday with a stated aim of retaking every area Ansarallah holds, Sanaa included. Its government claims 2,750 strikes in a day and 1,400 fighters “neutralized,” and the coalition says it hit 136 targets.
The same camp claimed Mocha on Tuesday, and Ansarallah answered with video of its fighters inside the city. Saree says Saudi F-15s and Typhoons flew 129 raids in 48 hours in mid-September.
The International Organization for Migration counts more than 200,000 people displaced since September, and UN envoy Hans Grundberg now speaks of full-scale war.
The geography explains Riyadh’s panic. With ongoing developments in the Strait of Hormuz due to the war on Iran, Saudi crude leaves through the East-West pipeline to Yanbu and then past Bab al-Mandab.
Drones hit that pipeline on September 10 and, according to Kpler, flows stopped for at least 11 days. Riyadh blamed launches from Iraq. Ansarallah seized Mayyun Island, also called Perim, in the strait last month.
On Thursday, ten years after the Saudi bombing of Sanaa’s Great Hall killed more than 140 mourners and wounded hundreds, Ansarallah leader Sayyed Abdul-Malik al-Houthi called the war a strategic failure for Riyadh.
He said Yemeni forces can strike enemy assets across the Red Sea and Arabian Sea from anywhere in the country, and accused Riyadh of serving American and Zionist ambitions while posing as guardian of the holy sites.
The kingdom is buying muscle elsewhere. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey activated the so-called Mecca pact on October 5. Pakistan reportedly keeps about 8,000 troops in the kingdom, with JF-17 jets and HQ-9 air defenses, and Reuters reported four planeloads of Pakistani weapons landing in Aden.
Islamabad says its forces will not cross the border. Sanaa’s acting foreign minister, Abdulwahid Abu Ras, has urged Islamabad and Ankara to stay out.
Washington hedges as of now. President Trump reportedly refused the crown prince’s September request for strikes after Ansarallah promised to spare American shipping, though Secretary of State Marco Rubio now vows to honor the U.S. defense commitment.
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