Several people were injured on 10 October after a blast at Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport, news agencies reported, the latest in a run of Houthi-claimed strikes on Saudi airports.
Reuters and AFP reported that the airport was evacuated after a loud explosion. Reuters cited an eyewitness who saw more than a dozen ambulances heading to the site, and AFP quoted a hospital source as saying dozens were wounded. Saudi authorities had not commented on the incident. The airport told passengers to check with their airlines before travelling, Western embassies warned their citizens to stay away, and several Gulf carriers cancelled flights, including Kuwait Airways, which cited the security situation.
The airport, which handled 37 million passengers in 2024, has now been hit or targeted repeatedly in five days. Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation said attacks on 6 and 7 October on King Khalid and on Abha International Airport in the south-west killed three people and injured 36. A Sudanese man died in Riyadh, and a Moroccan woman and an Algerian woman died in Abha.
On 8 October, the Houthis claimed a further ballistic missile strike on the Riyadh airport. Saudi Arabia did not confirm it, and the Saudi-led coalition said it had intercepted two missiles fired towards the capital. The disruption that day was already severe: 169 of 378 scheduled departures, or 44.7 percent, were cancelled or did not operate, according to the aviation analytics firm Cirium. Lufthansa Group suspended Riyadh flights until 16 October, and Air India and Air India Express until 10 October.
The Houthis, an Iran-backed movement that controls much of north-western Yemen, say they are retaliating for Saudi support of Yemen’s internationally recognised government. They have also warned international airlines to stop using Saudi airspace, except over Mecca and Medina.
The fighting has intensified since the Houthis seized a stretch of Red Sea coast along the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the narrow channel between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden that carries a large share of global shipping. Government forces, backed by Saudi air power, have launched an offensive to retake the territory, and the coalition says it has struck dozens of Houthi military sites in response to the airport attacks. More than 200,000 Yemenis have fled their homes as the fighting has escalated.
Saudi Arabia built a military coalition in 2015 to stop the Houthis taking over Yemen. A truce in 2022 largely halted the fighting after years of war that killed hundreds of thousands of people, but it began to break down in July this year, when the Houthis resumed missile and drone attacks on Saudi airports, oil facilities and Red Sea tankers.
