Three people were killed and 36 wounded when Houthi attacks hit Saudi Arabia airports over two days, including King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh. The dead included a male resident of Sudanese nationality at the Riyadh airport, while two women of Moroccan and Algerian nationalities were killed at Abha International Airport.
The attacks struck on 6 October and 7 October, according to the Saudi Authority of Civil Aviation. At Abha International Airport, two people were killed and 28 wounded. At King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, one person was killed and eight were wounded.
Yahya Saree on the strikes
Yahya Saree said the Houthis attacked both Saudi Arabia airports with ballistic missiles and drones. He also said the Houthis attacked Aden's International Airport in Yemen on Wednesday. Passengers and airport personnel at Abha International Airport and King Khalid International Airport were caught in two separate incidents across two days, with one airport hit in Riyadh and one in Abha.
The Houthis said the airport strikes were a "response to the Saudi aggression against our country". The Saudi-led coalition said the attacks would "not go unpunished" and said it had targeted more than 80 Houthi military sites across Saada, Al Hudaydah, Al Jawf and Ma'rib. That is the immediate military split now: one side claims retaliation, the other says it has already answered with strikes of its own.
Saudi-led coalition response
The broader fight fits the Yemen civil war, where Saudi-backed government forces and the Iran-backed Houthis have already pulled civilian infrastructure into the conflict. The airport attacks reached a major travel corridor inside Saudi Arabia and also crossed the Yemen border in the same exchange, widening the list of places travelers now have to treat as affected.
For anyone moving through Riyadh or Abha, the practical point is narrow and immediate: the damage was not limited to one airport or one day, and the casualty toll came from separate strikes. Which specific airport was hit on 6 October and which was hit on 7 October remains the unresolved detail inside the timeline the Saudi Authority of Civil Aviation gave.
Saudi Arabia airport timeline
The sequence matters because the two attacks were split across 6 October and 7 October, then followed by the Saudi-led coalition's statement late on Wednesday. The coalition's claim of more than 80 Houthi military sites targeted across Saada, Al Hudaydah, Al Jawf and Ma'rib is the only stated follow-on action, and the airport side of the story still turns on who was hit first and where the next strike landed.
