Houthis target Riyadh for 1st time in renewed Yemen fighting, as smoke seen at capital’s airport

Yemen’s Houthis said on Saturday that they launched strikes targeting “sensitive sites” in Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh and oil facilities in the kingdom’s port city of Yanbu, hours after residents reported blasts in the Saudi capital.

“In response to the Saudi enemy’s criminal attempts to target the capital Sanaa… the Yemeni Armed Forces carried out two successful military operations using a large number of ballistic and cruise missiles and drones,” Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said, in a statement on Telegram.

“The first targeted sensitive sites in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, and the second targeted Aramco facilities in Yanbu.”

The Houthi statement came after firefighters extinguished a blaze on a fuel tank emblazoned with the logo of the Saudi oil giant Aramco at a fuel depot near Riyadh’s international airport earlier on Saturday.

A large plume of smoke was visible near the airport after booms were heard and Saudi Arabia sent alerts overnight warning of potential danger around the capital.

Reuters video and photographs showed a huge pillar of black smoke rising in the area, with the airport highway, main terminal building and other facilities in the foreground.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis confirmed later on Saturday that the Iran-backed group had fired a ballistic missile at Riyadh at dawn.

Saudi Arabia’s air force “successfully intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile launched by the Houthi terrorist militia towards the city of Riyadh at dawn on Saturday,” coalition spokesman Turki al-Malki posted on X.

He said the Houthis also tried to target “civilians and civilian infrastructure in Bisha, Taif, Farasan, and Yanbu,” adding that the attacks “were thwarted by the Gulf monarchy’s air defences.”

Aircraft tracking website FlightRadar24 reported major issues at the Saudi capital’s Riyadh King Khalid International Airport, including cancellations and delays.

The airport was listed under the site’s maximum disruption index of 5.0, meaning the airport was seeing “major problems with long delays and several canceled flights.”

The disruption follows an overnight air raid alert issued by Saudi authorities, the first since fighting in neighboring Yemen intensified this month.

Hours after the early morning alert, residents told AFP on condition of anonymity that they heard what sounded like another round of explosions echoing through parts of the Saudi capital.

The Iran-backed Houthi rebels have been fighting with Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces since the country’s civil war reignited in July, when the group also declared a maritime blockade on Saudi Arabia and began targeting its ships in the Red Sea.

This is the first time in the current flare-up that the conflict has reached the Saudi capital, further shaking a global economy already rattled by nearly seven months of war between the United States and Iran.

“The area is under a hostile aerial threat,” a message received shortly before 3 a.m. by residents of the Saudi capital warned, urging them to stay indoors.

AFP journalists then heard two explosions before the alert was lifted about half an hour later by Saudi Arabia’s civil defense agency.

Saudi Arabia is yet to comment on the threat mentioned in the warnings sent overnight to residents of several regions and has not identified where it originated from.

It comes after Riyadh accused the group of targeting Mecca on Wednesday, denouncing it as a “cowardly terrorist attack” on Islam’s holy city, which welcomes millions of pilgrims each year, both Sunnis and Shias.

The Houthis strongly denied the accusation, calling it a “worn-out lie.”

In turn, the group reported dozens of retaliatory strikes carried out daily by Riyadh since its lightning offensive this month to take over the country’s entire Red Sea coast, giving it control over the vital Bab el-Mandeb strait.

The Houthis said that Saudi Arabia had launched 26 strikes against areas under their control in the past 24 hours.

The group said that the number of Saudi strikes on its positions had reached 300 over the last week, saying they targeted areas across Houthi-held Yemen.

The war in Yemen broke out in 2014 when the Houthis seized control of the capital Sanaa and other regions, triggering in March 2015 a military intervention led by Saudi Arabia.

The fragile truce reached in 2022 between the warring parties collapsed in July, when the pro-Iranian fighters defied Riyadh’s control of Yemeni airspace by allowing an Iranian aircraft to land in Yemen.

Their recent takeover of the coastline has sparked global concern, with international maritime trade already heavily impacted by Tehran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz since the start of the Middle East war in late February.

The Houthis, for their part, insist there is no threat to shipping in the sea lane — except for Saudi ships, from the world’s leading crude exporter.

Figures from maritime tracking firm Kpler showed that Saudi exports via the Bab el-Mandeb strait had dropped since July, although five loaded ships had passed through in the last week.

The United States, which according to Axios last week refused to strike the Houthis at Saudi Arabia’s request, approved the sale of 48 F-35 fighter jets to the kingdom on Thursday.

The sale, worth $24.3 billion, is intended to help Riyadh “deter current and future threats,” the US State Department said.

The UN said Friday that the renewed fighting had displaced more than 112,000 people while nearly 3,000 others had fled across the sea to Djibouti, heaping further misery on an already struggling population.