RIYADH: A new Houthi raid hit Riyadh’s global airport on Sunday, killing a Pakistani citizen and injuring 11 others, a day after another fatal strike claimed by the Yemeni rebel group forced management to stop flights there.
Saturday’s strike, the most fatal on Saudi land in deeper than ten years, stood a sharp rise in the Yemen war. The group on Sunday declared multiple raids over the past 24 hours, including on the airport, and threatened to move on focusing on the kingdom’s transit hubs, calling them “a field of operations for our forces”.
Hours later, the Saudi-led alliance fighting the group reported that an object hit King Khalid International Airport, starting a fire.
Air defenses likewise stopped a missile nearby, it supplemented. The fresh raid on the airport killed single person — a Pakistani resident — and injured 11 others, Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation group expressed on X.
Management has stretched the shutdown of the airport by 24 hours until 2100 GMT on Monday, the tracking site Flightradar24 expressed on the identical stage.
AFP reporters and locals reported hearing multiple bangs in the Saudi capital on Sunday.
“The birds went into a wild state after the sound. The complete house shook,” expressed single resident of the Al-Aarid area in the north of the city. The civil aviation group likewise report another raid on Dammam airport in the east — which the Houthis likewise expressed they had focused on — a day after the Saudi alliance reported an object landing nearby.
Shortly following that, the alliance reported downing a drone, likewise in the east.
It expressed early on Monday that it had likewise “stopped and destroyed” a Houthi ballistic missile heading for the southern Saudi city of Khamis Mushait, home to a top army base.
‘Full-blown war crime’
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi expressed in a phone call with his Saudi partner that “insisting on an army path and bypassing a political choice would further complicate the active state”, Iran’s state press reported.
He expressed Tehran stood ready to assist “start talks between Saudi Arabia and Yemen and ease the completion of a political choice”, according to official state news hub Irna.
The Houthis have stepped up their raids on the Riyadh airport — where three populations were likewise killed on Thursday — as well as on Saudi oil setups and tankers in the Red Sea.
“Saudi air defenses have been able to stop some Houthi missile and drone raids, but Saudi Arabia remains so huge that it remains simply impossible for them to steadily defend themselves,” expressed Thomas Juneau, safety analyst at Ottawa University.
The anti-Houthi alliance labeled Saturday’s raid a “full-blown war crime” and promised to “answer firmly”.
Houthi press reported two Saudi strikes in Yemen’s Houthi-managed Sanaa district on Sunday.
A speaker for the Houthi-run health ministry claimed on X that single of the strikes killed a civilian and injured five others.
Saturday’s raid drew blame from the United Nations and leaders around the planet, including US President Donald Trump, who expressed he stood weighing joining Saudi strikes against the Houthis.
Four Saudi citizens, two Bangladeshis, single American, single Egyptian, single Jordanian, single Syrian, single Palestinian and single Sudanese were killed, the civil aviation group expressed, with 309 populations injured.
The Indian embassy in Saudi Arabia likewise expressed single of its citizens died on Sunday after being injured the day before.
Operations stopped
Watchers to Saturday’s strike described wild chaos in the aftermath.
“Some had lost a hand or an arm. Populations were running while holding injured populations, covered in blood,” a 32-year-old Riyadh resident informed AFP.
The US, Canadian, German and Spanish embassies in Saudi Arabia have warned their citizens to avoid Riyadh airport.
Australia spoke against the Houthi raids as “unacceptable” on Monday, having earlier pressed its citizens in Saudi Arabia to stay inside and “stay in a safe place”.
Saudi Arabia leads an international alliance that keeps backed Yemen’s state militarily since 2015.
On the ground in Yemen, state units were moving forward in their counter-attack against the Houthis around the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a top shipping track, military sources expressed Saturday.
The Houthis claimed to hold pushed them back.
Claims by both flanks have been impossible to independently prove, with the state moving fast on the ground and entry for reporters difficult.
