Summary

At least 12 people have been killed and 309 injured in an attack on the international airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, local authorities say. The deaths included four Saudis, two people from Bangladesh and one person each from the US, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, Sudan and Egypt, the Saudi civil aviation authority confirmed. Operations at King Khalid International Airport have been suspended after the attack, which was the deadliest in the kingdom since May 2015. A Saudi-led military coalition later vowed to respond to the attack, which it called a “war crime” and blamed on Yemen’s Houthis. The Houthis have not commented on Saturday’s attack but did say they were behind strikes on the same airport on Thursday that killed three people and damaged a plane. Another three people were killed in separate Houthi attacks on two different Saudi airports on 6 and 7 October. Fighting has recently escalated between Yemen’s Saudi-backed government forces and the Houthis, who are backed by Iran and control most of the country. In Saturday’s statement, the Saudi civil aviation authority said some of the injured were “in critical condition” and damage to the airport was being assessed. More than a dozen ambulances were seen rushing to the airport, an eyewitness told the Reuters news agency. Saudi-led coalition spokesman Maj Gen Turki al-Maliki later said the attack on one of the passenger terminals resulted in deaths and injuries among civilian passengers and airport staff. He described the attack as a “full-fledged war crime”. An eyewitness told Reuters they had seen “injured [people] in front of my eyes” fleeing from gate 401 after it was hit. António Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, said he was “deeply shocked” by the attacks which he called a “violation of international law” that “must cease immediately”. In a statement on X, Kuwait’s foreign ministry called the strikes a “heinous and cowardly attack”. The attacks were also condemned by Egypt, Palestine and Qatar. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio strongly condemned recent attacks on Saudi Arabia as he confirmed an American citizen was killed in the strikes. Speaking to reporters, US President Donald Trump indicated he may join the Saudis in carrying out strikes against the Iran-backed Houthis. “We just found out about the recent attack, so we’ll make a decision. We move very quickly.” For the second time in less than a month, schools in Riyadh have switched to remote learning for the week. Western embassies in Saudi Arabia warned their citizens to stay away from the Riyadh airport. The UK Foreign Office told British nationals to avoid the area “until the airport is secure”. The US embassy has told staff they must seek “special authorisation” to use the airports in Riyadh, Jeddah, and Dammam. Several Gulf airlines said they had cancelled their flights to and from the airport, with Kuwait Airways citing the “security situation” there. The Houthis say they are targeting Saudi Arabia over its support for government forces in Yemen’s civil war. The conflict worsened after the Houthis seized strategically important stretches of the Red Sea coast in a rapid offensive. That included the port of Mokha on the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which is the narrowest point of the Red Sea and a chokepoint for global shipping. Yemeni pro-government forces have since said they had “secured” the strait at the southern end of the Red Sea. The Saudi-led coalition was formed in 2015 after Arab countries joined forces to stop the Houthis taking over Yemen from the country’s internationally recognised government. A temporary ceasefire was brokered in 2022 after years of air strikes and ground fighting led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, triggering one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. But the informal truce began to unravel in July. The Houthis announced a “maritime embargo” against Saudi Arabia and began missile and drone attacks on Saudi airports, oil facilities and tankers in the Red Sea. They said they were retaliating against what they described as a years-long Saudi blockade and for an air strike on the airport in Yemen’s capital Sanaa, which is controlled by the Houthis. The Houthis are an armed political and religious group from northern Yemen which champions the country’s Shia Muslim minority, the Zaidis. They declare themselves to be part of the Iranian-led “axis of resistance” against Israel, the US and the wider West – along with armed groups such as Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement. The latest exchanges come It comes amid fears that the US and Israel might be about to resume strikes against Iran. Efforts to secure a deal to end that conflict, which has sent shockwaves through the global economy, have so far come to nothing.