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Yemen’s Houthis said Thursday they had targeted King Khalid International Airport in the Saudi capital Riyadh with a ballistic missile.
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There was no immediate confirmation of the strike or damage or casualties from Saudi Arabia at this time.
Several explosions resonated in Riyadh on Thursday, according to witnesses.
Diplomats were instructed to shelter in place at their respective embassies as witnesses said international schools were also taking precautions.
A previous drone attack on the same airport killed one person, and two others were killed in another strike on the airport in the southwestern city of Abha, Riyadh said Thursday, as flight delays continued into a second day.
The attack on Abha airport killed Moroccan and Algerian residents and injured 28 others, while the attack on King Khalid Airport killed a Sudanese national and injured eight others, officials said.
The Saudi General Authority of Civil Aviation did not assign responsibility for the attacks at the two international airports.
The spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis, General Turki al-Malki, said forces had intercepted a ballistic missile north of Riyadh and destroyed a platform in San’aa, Yemen’s capital, that had been used to launch attacks on the Saudi capital.
The group officially known as Ansar Allah has claimed responsibility for repeated attacks targeting Saudi airports in recent days, as well as salvos targeting critical infrastructure and military sites across the kingdom.
The strikes on Saudi facilities pose a threat to crucial shipping alternatives to the Strait of Hormuz, where traffic has been reduced due to the war in Iran.
Saudi Arabia has also accused the Houthis of targeting Islam’s holiest sites in Mecca and Medina, allegations the group has dismissed as “fabrications and lies propagated by the criminal al-Saud regime.”
The Houthis are Zaydi Shiite Muslims, a specific branch of Islam historically rooted in northern Yemen that is theologically distinct from both the dominant Twelver Shiite Islam of Iran and the Wahhabi-influenced Sunni tradition of Saudi Arabia.
Any confirmed attack against Mecca or Medina would put its perpetrators out of reach in the eyes of almost the entire Muslim world, Shiite and Sunni.
Houthi strikes further intensified as Saudi Arabia and Yemeni government forces launched a major ground and air offensive aimed at retaking territory the group seized a month ago along Yemen’s western Red Sea coast and in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
On Monday, officials said Saudi-led coalition forces had recaptured several key areas around the strait, through which about 12% of global trade passes.
“The Houthis believe they can maximize Saudi economic costs and force Saudi Arabia to comply with Houthi demands by striking civilian infrastructure, such as oil facilities and airports,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, wrote in an analysis.
The fighting in Yemen has in recent weeks become the most active front in a broader regional war, which for months has seen violence repeatedly shift across the besieged Middle East.
More than 200,000 people have been displaced since the renewed escalation of the war in Yemen in July, according to UN data.
Additional sources • AFP, AP
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