Attacks on Abha and King Khalid airports kill three people
Saudi civil aviation said two women, one Moroccan and one Algerian, were killed at Abha and a Sudanese man was killed at King Khalid in Riyadh. Thirty-six people were wounded. The Houthis claimed the strikes. A Saudi-led coalition said it hit more than 80 sites in reply.
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Saudi Arabia's General Authority of Civil Aviation said on Wednesday that attacks on two of the kingdom's airports killed three people and wounded 36. The strikes hit Abha International Airport, close to the Yemen border, and King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, on 6 and 7 October. The authority did not say which airport was hit on which day.
At Abha, two women were killed. One was a Moroccan national and the other Algerian. Twenty-eight people were wounded. GACA said the injured included Saudi citizens and residents from Bangladesh and the Philippines, with injuries ranging from minor to serious. At King Khalid, a Sudanese man was killed and eight people were wounded: five Saudi citizens, two Egyptian residents and one Pakistani resident. Those injuries also ran from minor to serious.
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the group's forces had attacked both airports with ballistic missiles and drones. He also claimed a strike the same day on Aden International Airport, the main gateway for the parts of Yemen outside Houthi control. Saree framed the attacks as a reply to what he called Saudi aggression, and he said the kingdom and its partners had carried out 60 airstrikes and missile attacks in the previous 24 hours.
GACA did not name a responsible party. It said emergency teams and the relevant authorities responded under existing plans. A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition said the airport attacks would not go unpunished. Late on Wednesday the coalition said it had struck more than 80 Houthi military sites in Saada, Hodeidah, Jawf and Marib.
The airport strikes sit inside a wider return of fighting between the Iran-aligned Houthis and forces backed by Saudi Arabia. Aden's airport has been hit repeatedly in that fighting. Abha has been a target in earlier rounds of the war because of its position in the Asir region, near the border. King Khalid is the capital's main international airport, so a hit there reaches a different set of passengers, staff and flight schedules than a border-city strike.
The casualty list is not a Saudi-only toll. Of the three dead, none was described by GACA as a Saudi citizen. The wounded mixed citizens and residents from several countries. That pattern follows from how Gulf airports work: terminals, ramps and contractor crews are staffed by expatriates as well as nationals. A strike on a public terminal does not sort by passport.
Aviation authorities have not published a full closure timetable. What they have published is the split of harm. Abha took the larger injury count, 28 against eight in Riyadh, and both of the women who died. Riyadh took one death and a smaller wounded list. For airlines, the operational question is whether either field stays open for scheduled traffic, and whether insurers treat the two fields as a single risk or as separate ones. GACA's statement did not answer that.
The coalition's reply was counted in sites, not in a named campaign. More than 80 locations across four governorates is a wide target set for a single night's statement. Saada is the Houthi heartland. Hodeidah is the Red Sea port governorate. Jawf and Marib have been contested ground for years. A figure of that size, if it holds, means the reply was not limited to a launch site near the border.
Saree's claim on Aden pulls the same day in a second direction. The Houthis struck a Saudi-backed airport inside Yemen and two airports inside Saudi Arabia. The Transport Ministry in Aden said ballistic missiles and explosive-laden drones were used there. One day of aviation attacks therefore ran on both sides of the border.
The names that matter for any later accounting are the ones GACA already gave: a Moroccan woman and an Algerian woman at Abha, a Sudanese man at King Khalid, and wounded people from Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Egypt and Pakistan. The dates are 6 and 7 October. The claim of responsibility is Saree's. The stated military reply is more than 80 sites. What is still missing, in the public record, is which airport was hit on which day, and whether either field has a published return to normal operations.
