Saudi airport attacks kill three as Yemen fighting escalates

Attacks on two Saudi Arabian airports killed three people and wounded 36 over two days, Saudi aviation authorities said Wednesday, as fighting in Yemen spilled across the border into the kingdom.

Two women, one Moroccan and one Algerian, were killed at Abha International Airport near Yemen, where 28 people were wounded, according to Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation. At King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, a Sudanese male resident was killed and eight people were wounded. The authority said the airports were attacked on October 6 and 7 but did not specify which was hit on each day.

The authority did not identify the attackers. Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said the group had struck both airports with ballistic missiles and drones. He described the attacks as a response to what he called “Saudi aggression against our country,” saying Yemen had been hit by “60 airstrikes and missile attacks in the past 24 hours.” Saree also said Houthi forces attacked Aden International Airport in Yemen on Wednesday, the BBC reported.

The Saudi-led coalition said late Wednesday that the attacks on the Saudi airports “will not go unpunished.” It said it had targeted more than 80 Houthi military sites across four Yemeni governorates. Al Jazeera reported that the coalition put the number at 82 and said the targets included ballistic missile facilities, command centres, communications systems and weapons stores.

Yemeni government forces, meanwhile, said they had “neutralised” 1,860 Houthi fighters since launching a counteroffensive to retake Houthi-held territory, Al Jazeera reported. An army spokesperson said in a social media post early Thursday that government forces had carried out 2,103 “precise targeting operations” against Houthi positions across several fronts. The figures were claims by government forces.

Rashad al-Alimi, chairman of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, announced the operation, called “Dawn of Yemen,” on Sunday, according to Al Jazeera. He said its aim was to retake all Houthi-held territory, including the capital, Sanaa, which the group has controlled since 2014.

Recent fighting has focused on the Red Sea coast around the Bab al-Mandab Strait. The Houthis seized strategic stretches of coastline, including the port of Mokha, in an offensive, the BBC reported. Pro-government forces have since said they “secured” the strait. Al Jazeera reported that forces aligned with the government launched an operation Tuesday to capture territory near the strait and Mokha.

The Saudi-led coalition was formed in 2015 to support Yemen’s internationally recognised government against the Houthis. A temporary ceasefire was brokered in 2022 after years of air strikes and ground fighting that killed hundreds of thousands of people and triggered a severe humanitarian crisis, according to the BBC.

The United Nations said Wednesday that the latest escalation had displaced more than 200,000 people. UN Secretary General António Guterres condemned “the continued Houthi cross-border attacks” and said he was “deeply concerned by the sharp escalation in fighting.”