Houthi strikes kill 13 at Riyadh airport in two days as Trump weighs joining Saudi response

Riyadh, 12 October 2026. A projectile struck a passenger terminal at King Khalid International Airport on Sunday, killing one person and injuring 11 others. The dead was a Pakistani resident. Saudi civil aviation authorities said the wounded were transferred to hospitals for treatment. The strike came one day after a missile hit the same terminal complex, killing 12 people and wounding 309.

The Saturday attack remains the deadliest on Saudi soil in more than a decade. Among the 12 dead were four Saudi citizens, two Bangladeshis, one American, one Egyptian, one Jordanian, one Syrian, one Palestinian and one Sudanese. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed the American casualty and called the strikes reprehensible. Hospitals activated mass call-ups of medical staff as ambulances and helicopters delivered casualties, some in critical condition. No public warning system alert preceded the impact.

The Houthis claimed responsibility for the weekend attacks. They have targeted the airport multiple times this week as part of a campaign that intensified over the summer. The group is aligned with Iran. The Saudi-led coalition fighting Houthi forces in Yemen described the Saturday strike as a full-fledged war crime and vowed a decisive response. On Sunday the Houthi-run Health Ministry reported that Saudi-led strikes in Yemen over five weeks had killed 91 people and injured 168, with 60 percent of the dead women and children. Separate reports said two Saudi airstrikes hit districts in Sanaa around midnight Sunday into Monday.

US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that Washington may join Saudi strikes against the Houthis. He told reporters the attack was not acceptable and that he planned to speak with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The White House has not yet announced a decision. The US has already conducted operations related to the broader Iran conflict that began earlier this year; the Defense Department updated its casualty figures last week to 21 service members killed and 865 wounded in those operations.

King Khalid International Airport suspended operations after the Saturday strike and extended the closure. Flight trackers showed the suspension running into Sunday evening. Airlines cancelled or diverted services. The US State Department and several other governments issued travel warnings for Riyadh and major Saudi airports. Oil executives dropped from a scheduled event in the kingdom after the attacks. Brent crude moved higher on the news before later retracing some gains amid uncertainty over the separate energy ceasefire claim in the Ukraine war.

The sequence of strikes on the capital's main airport raises the direct cost of the Houthi campaign for Saudi Arabia. Terminals 3 and 4, which handle domestic flights, sustained damage. Repair timelines have not been published. The attacks also test the limits of Saudi air defences against Iranian-supplied or Iranian-designed systems. Previous Houthi strikes on Saudi infrastructure have been frequent but rarely produced comparable civilian casualties on the ground.

Whether Trump authorises direct US participation will shape the next phase. A limited US role could involve additional intelligence or munitions support. A larger role would expand the geographic scope of American operations already under way against Iranian-linked targets. The Houthis have shown they can reach Riyadh repeatedly. Saudi authorities have shown they can intercept some incoming projectiles but not all. The casualty lists from the two terminal strikes make the gap concrete.

The airport remains the primary gateway for Riyadh. Prolonged disruption affects both commercial traffic and the kingdom's plans to expand aviation capacity under Vision 2030. Those plans now confront an immediate security problem that did not exist at the same scale six months ago. The number of dead and wounded across the weekend attacks stands at 13 killed and more than 320 injured. Further strikes or further responses will determine whether that total remains the peak.