Houthis claim strike on Riyadh airport shortly after it reopened

A new round of explosions and air defences over Saudi Arabia has put the spotlight back on Riyadh’s main airport, after Yemen’s Houthi movement said it launched another attack just hours after the kingdom announced flights were resuming.

The Houthis said they carried out a fresh strike on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, despite Saudi statements that operations had restarted following repeated assaults by the Iran-backed group.

The airport halted operations on 10 October after a Houthi-claimed attack killed 13 people — the deadliest incident in the kingdom in more than a decade.

Saudi Arabia said it intercepted another wave of missiles and drones today as the fighting with the militant group continued without let-up.

In their account, the Houthis said they targeted the Riyadh air hub along with other locations in the kingdom, including sites in Khamis Mushait and Jazan.

It was not immediately clear whether those were the same attacks Saudi officials said had been thwarted.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the group had “conducted three military operations with dozens of ballistic missiles,” Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said on X, adding that the strike on the airport “achieved its target”.

Riyadh airport after the deadly strike earlier this month

The conflict has become an increasingly destabilising element in the US-Israeli offensive against Iran, placing US ally Saudi Arabia under growing strain as a pressure point in the broader war.

Flight tracking data shows little traffic

After Saudi authorities said the airport would partially reopen, Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree warned that the facility would “never be safe” and called on airlines, airport workers and travellers to stay away.

Late yesterday, the airport announced that Terminal 1 would handle domestic flights and Terminal 2 would be used for international flights operated by national carriers starting today.

Even so, flight tracking data from Flightradar24 showed little traffic at the airport this evening.

The Saudi-led coalition said earlier this month that the Houthis carried out 20 attacks on the airport between 1 and 11 October.

Missile and drone attacks continue

Saudi civil defence said shrapnel from the interception of two ballistic missiles launched by the Houthis over Khamis Mushait and Ahad Rafidah injured two people and damaged residential buildings and vehicles.

Civil defence authorities earlier sent emergency alerts for Riyadh and the cities of Abha, Khamis Mushait, Jazan and Najran today, then said minutes later that the threat had passed.

The coalition said two drones and a ballistic missile were fired towards Riyadh, and a cruise missile was launched towards the southern city of Khamis Mushait.

It later said air defences intercepted 10 ballistic missiles fired towards southern Saudi Arabia.

The Houthis said they attacked the airport and Saudi oil facilities yesterday. Saudi authorities did not comment directly on the Houthi statements.

Saudi Arabia has intensified its strikes against the Houthis since the group seized strategic territory along the Red Sea coast last month, edging closer to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait — a global maritime chokepoint and a key shipping route for Gulf oil producers on the opposite side of the Arabian Peninsula from the Strait of Hormuz.

The renewed fighting in Yemen has shattered a UN-brokered truce that had largely held since 2022.

Saudi Arabia entered Yemen’s civil war in 2015 at the head of a coalition backing the internationally recognised government, after the Houthis captured the capital Sanaa a year earlier.