Terminal building at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Photo: liton islam / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0

Riyadh Airport Attack: Houthi Strike Kills 12, Wounds 309

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The Riyadh airport attack on Saturday, Oct. 10, killed 12 people and wounded 309 at King Khalid International Airport, according to Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation authority. Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis claimed they had “shut down” the airport, and the Saudi-led coalition said on Sunday that it would “respond decisively.”

It was the third strike on the airport in a single week and, according to Reuters, the deadliest attack inside the kingdom in more than a decade. The two earlier attacks this week killed four people and heavily damaged a Saudi commercial jet parked on the tarmac, as The Boston Report covered in its story on the first Houthi Riyadh airport attacks.

What happened in the Riyadh airport attack

Saudi authorities said the dead included four Saudi citizens, two Bangladeshis and one person each from the United States, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, Sudan and Egypt. Reuters reported that hospitals were flooded with wounded brought in by ambulance and helicopter, and that some were in critical condition. Jordan said separately that one of its citizens was killed and four were wounded.

Reuters reported that the strike came without warning and that Saudi Arabia’s threat warning system issued no alert. An eyewitness told the agency they saw an explosion and then several people lying injured inside the terminal. An injured traveler said they saw something fly across the sky outside before part of the ceiling near a departure gate collapsed. The U.S. Embassy in Riyadh urged American citizens to avoid the airport and the surrounding area.

All flights were diverted on Saturday. Flight-tracking service Flightradar24 reported on Sunday that the shutdown had been extended by 24 hours, until 1 a.m. local time on Monday. The airport serves a city of roughly 8 million people, and several airlines had already suspended Riyadh service after the earlier attacks this week.

Saudi-led coalition vows a response

Coalition spokesman Maj. Gen. Turki Al Malik called the strike “a full-fledged war crime according to the customary international humanitarian law” and “a heinous act that contradicts all principles, values, and ethics,” The National reported. He said the coalition would respond in line with international humanitarian law.

The attack follows a sharp escalation in Yemen. A 2022 truce between Riyadh and the Houthis unraveled over the summer, and the group seized the Bab el-Mandeb area on the Red Sea in September. The Saudi-backed Yemeni government launched an offensive on Monday, Oct. 5, to retake that territory; the Houthis responded by declaring Saudi airspace a zone of military operations. The Yemeni government’s military spokesman, Col. Majed Abdullah al-Nazili, told reporters on Friday that its forces had killed at least 1,150 Houthi fighters in nearly 2,000 operations over 24 hours, a figure that could not be independently verified. The Houthis say Saudi and Yemeni strikes have killed civilians, including women and children. Readers can find background in our report on the Saudi coalition’s Houthi operation.

Trump weighs joining strikes on the Houthis

Asked outside the White House whether the United States would join Saudi strikes, President Donald Trump said: “We may. We’re going to look at it. We just found out about the recent attack, so we’ll make a decision. We move very quickly.” Al Jazeera reported that Trump also said he planned to call Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the attacks had taken “numerous innocent lives, including an American citizen,” and wrote that they “demonstrate a blatant disregard for innocent civilian life. They must stop now.” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut criticized the administration, writing that “this is now a full regional war” and blaming Trump for starting it, while also saying the Houthi “campaign of terror” against a civilian airport “must stop immediately.”

International condemnation and what comes next

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said he was “deeply shocked” and called for an immediate halt to attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure. U.N. envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg called the series of strikes a “grave escalation.” Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, called the attack “completely unacceptable,” Qatar described it as a “grave violation” of Saudi sovereignty, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called it “abhorrent.” Kuwait, Egypt, Oman and the Netherlands also condemned it.

The timing is significant for the kingdom. Riyadh is due to host major energy and investment conferences soon, and organizers said before Saturday’s strike that those events would go ahead as planned. Reuters noted that the deadly strikes exposed weaknesses in Saudi air defenses at the same time the kingdom is running an air campaign in Yemen. The questions now are whether the coalition’s promised response widens the war and whether Washington takes part. The strikes also feed a wider debate over air-defense stocks, explored in our explainer on the Patriot interceptor shortage.

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