Three Killed in Houthi Attacks on Riyadh Airport — SkimNews
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- Saudi Arabia's General Authority of Civil Aviation confirmed three nationals were killed and several others wounded in two attacks Thursday on Riyadh's international airport, with the second strike hitting a Saudia aircraft and killing one of its pilots.
- Yemen's Houthis claimed responsibility, saying they fired two ballistic missiles at the airport and also targeted Najran airport and Khamis Mushait air base — attacks Saudi Arabia has not confirmed.
- Casualties from the previous week's Houthi strikes included two killed and 28 wounded at Abha International Airport on Wednesday and one death at King Khalid airport in Riyadh on 6–7 October, per Saudi officials.
- Houthi military spokesman justified the attacks as retaliation for what he called 60 Saudi-led air strikes and missile attacks on Yemen in the past 24 hours, part of the group's declared 'maritime embargo' against Saudi Arabia.
- Renewed fighting followed the Houthis' recent seizure of Red Sea coastline including the port of Mokha on the Bab al-Mandab Strait, though Yemeni pro-government forces later claimed to have 'secured' the chokepoint.
- Air traffic at Riyadh airport returned to normal, the civil aviation authority said, after the strikes — the latest in a pattern of escalation that began unraveling the 2022 ceasefire in July.
Why it matters: The strike on a capital-city international airport and a commercial carrier aircraft marks a sharp escalation from the Houthis' previous targeting of less prominent Saudi airports, putting civilian aviation directly in the crossfire of the renewed Yemen war. Saudi Arabia now faces attacks on both its southern airports and its Red Sea oil corridor simultaneously, stretching its air-defense and diplomatic bandwidth at a moment when the informal ceasefire has fully collapsed.
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