File image.
An attack on King Khalid International Airport in Saudi Arabia’s capital injured several people and forced authorities to suspend operations on October 10, as separate reports emerged of a possible strike on a major oil and gas facility in the kingdom’s eastern oil-producing region.
Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation authority said operations at the Riyadh airport had been suspended while officials assessed the damage and verified the safety of the facility.
Meanwhile, a regional official told The Associated Press that a missile struck the complex housing Terminals 3 and 4, which serve domestic flights.
Witnesses reported an explosion inside the airport and injured people on the ground. More than a dozen ambulances were seen rushing to the facility, Reuters reported. A traveler told the news agency that something had flown across the sky before part of the ceiling near a departure gate collapsed.
The official casualty toll remained unclear. Saudi authorities said they were assessing the number of injured, while a source at a Riyadh hospital told AFP that dozens of people had been wounded, including at least five who were being treated in intensive care.
The suspension disrupted air travel across the kingdom. Flight-tracking services showed flights to Riyadh being canceled or diverted, while Kuwait Airways, Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways canceled services to the Saudi capital.
The airport had already been targeted twice earlier in the week in attacks that killed four people and destroyed a Saudi airliner.
Yemen’s Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah, have claimed responsibility for previous strikes on Saudi airports and other infrastructure but had not immediately commented on the latest incident.
The airport attack came amid reports of a possible strike on the Shedgum gas-processing plant in the Ghawar oil-field complex in eastern Saudi Arabia. The reports described smoke rising from the facility after an alleged missile attack.
The Israeli news outlet JFeed reported that the plant had been hit by ballistic missiles, citing satellite imagery and a reported spike in thermal activity. The open-source monitoring site Hamer Intel also reported smoke over the area following the suspected attack.
Despite these reports, Saudi authorities and state oil company Saudi Aramco have not yet publicly confirmed an attack on Shedgum.
Ghawar is one of the world’s largest conventional oil fields and a central part of Saudi Arabia’s petroleum industry. Shedgum is a gas-processing facility associated with the field, meaning damage there would not by itself establish that oil production across Ghawar had been interrupted.
The attacks came as fighting intensified between Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces and the Houthis, who have expanded their missile and drone campaign against Saudi targets in recent days.
The group warned international airlines to avoid Saudi airspace, describing it as a zone of military operations, after Saudi-backed forces launched an offensive to regain territory along Yemen’s Red Sea coast.
U.S. President Donald Trump said after the attack on King Khalid International Airport that Washington was considering whether to join Saudi military action against the Houthis.
“We may. We’re going to look at it,” he told reporters, according to Reuters.
Overall, Saudi Arabia appears to be defenseless in the face of the Houthis, who have succeeded to a large extent in restricting aviation over the kingdom. Despite Trump’s latest remarks, the U.S. is unlikely to take a more direct role against the group, as its forces in the region remain focused on Iran. Still, the U.S. could carry out a one-off attack to show support for Riyadh. This could, however, trigger an even harsher response by the Houthis.
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