Houthi attack kills 12 at Riyadh airport in deadliest strike in over a decade

On Saturday morning, an explosion tore through Riyadh's international airport, killing twelve people and wounding more than three hundred. The dead came from eight countries: four Saudis, two Bangladeshis, and one each from the United States, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, Sudan, and Egypt. Hospitals filled rapidly with the wounded, many arriving by ambulance and helicopter, some in critical condition. The attack was the deadliest strike Saudi Arabia had suffered in more than a decade.

It was the third assault on King Khalid International Airport in a single week. The two previous strikes, launched earlier in the week, had killed four people and damaged a commercial aircraft parked on the tarmac. But Saturday's strike was different in scale and consequence. No warning system had alerted the public. All flights were diverted or cancelled. The airport that serves a city of roughly eight million people shut down entirely.

The Houthis, an Iran-backed militant group, claimed responsibility. The head of their media office posted on X that the group had "shut down Riyadh international airport." The timing was deliberate. Just days earlier, the Saudi-backed Yemeni government had launched an offensive aimed at recapturing territory the Houthis had seized, including the strategic Red Sea chokepoint of Bab el-Mandeb. The Houthis had declared Saudi airspace a military operations zone and warned commercial airlines to stay away.

The attacks exposed a gap in Saudi Arabia's defenses. The kingdom has been waging an air campaign against the Houthis while supporting the Yemeni government's ground operations, yet the militants had struck three times in one week without being stopped. A Saudi-led military coalition vowed to respond, but the vulnerability was now public. The US embassy in Riyadh advised all American citizens to avoid the airport and surrounding areas. President Donald Trump, asked whether Washington might join Saudi strikes against the Houthis, said the administration was reviewing the situation and would "move very quickly" on a decision. Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned the attacks as showing "blatant disregard for innocent civilian life."

The conflict's roots ran deep. Saudi Arabia had entered the Yemen war in 2015 at the head of an Arab coalition, attempting to dislodge the Houthis from the capital, Sanaa, which they had seized the year before. The war ground into a bloody stalemate, with hundreds of thousands of Yemenis killed by fighting and hunger. In 2022, Saudi Arabia and the Houthis struck a ceasefire deal that froze the conflict. That arrangement had unraveled over the summer, culminating in the Houthis' rapid advance to capture Bab el-Mandeb. Now, with the Saudi-backed government attempting to retake lost ground and the Houthis putting the city of Taiz under siege, the violence had escalated sharply.

Riyadh was scheduled to host major energy and investment conferences in the coming days. Several airlines had already suspended or cancelled flights to the capital following the earlier attacks. Conference organizers said ahead of Saturday's strike that the events would proceed as planned, though the airport closure and the threat of further attacks cast doubt on that commitment. Flight-tracking data showed that by Saturday afternoon, only a helicopter remained hovering over the airport. The city's transportation hub, and with it the kingdom's ability to receive international visitors, had been effectively shut down by a militant group operating from across the border.