Three dead as Houthi strikes hit Saudi airports in Riyadh and Abha

Saudi Arabia confirmed on Wednesday that attacks on two of its international airports killed three people and wounded 36 others, the deadliest spillover yet from Yemen's reignited war into the kingdom's civilian aviation network. The General Authority of Civil Aviation said Abha International Airport in the south-west and King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh were struck on Tuesday and Wednesday, October 6 and 7.

At Abha, close to the Yemeni border, two women residents were killed, one Moroccan and one Algerian national in varying official accounts, and 28 people were wounded, including Saudi citizens and Bangladeshi and Filipino residents. At King Khalid, the capital's main gateway, one Sudanese national was killed and eight others wounded. Saudi authorities did not immediately assign blame in their first statement, but Yemen's Houthi movement had already claimed a flurry of operations.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said on October 6 that the group had fired a ballistic missile at King Khalid airport, struck the Aramco refinery at Rabigh on the Red Sea coast, and hit Abha airport, the Khamis Mushait air base and sites in Najran and Jizan. The Houthis also warned international airlines to stay out of Saudi airspace, except for routes serving Mecca and Medina. The Saudi-led coalition backing Yemen's internationally recognised government said it had destroyed the launch platform used against Riyadh and later struck what it called 82 military targets.

The United States Mission in Saudi Arabia issued a security alert warning citizens of potential drone and missile attacks, flight cancellations and airspace closures. The attacks come just weeks after a Houthi missile hit a fuel storage tank at King Khalid airport. Since the conflict flared again in July, following the collapse of a US-Iran ceasefire, Houthi forces have seized coastal territory, Riyadh has answered with airstrikes, and a Yemeni government counter-offensive claims gains around Mocha and the Red Sea.

The United Nations said on Wednesday that renewed fighting has displaced more than 200,000 people inside Yemen. For passengers in Riyadh and Abha this week, that distant number arrived as a holding pattern, a closed terminal and a casualty list. What began in 2015 as a war inside Yemen has never stayed inside Yemen. This week it landed, again, on civilian runways, and the promise of retaliation from Riyadh suggests it will not be the last time travellers are asked to bear the risk of a war they did not choose.