Saudi aviation authority says Jazan and Najran airports were hit, three hurt

Saudi Arabia's General Authority of Civil Aviation said on Tuesday that strikes on Monday evening hit King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz airport in Jazan and Najran airport, wounding three people and causing material damage. The authority called the injuries minor in one line of its statement and, in another account of the same text, said the injured had been taken to hospital with wounds of varying severity. Specialised teams dealt with the strikes as they happened, the authority said, and it is still assessing damage and measures to protect passengers and staff.

The Houthis claimed the strikes. Military spokesman Yahya Saree said on Monday evening that the group had carried out three operations with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones. In the account carried from Anadolu, he said the first targeted King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and disrupted traffic, the second hit an Aramco refinery at Rabigh in the Mecca region and started a fire, and the third covered Abha airport, the Khamis Mushait base, the Akfa camp in Asir, and sites in Najran and Jazan. Saudi Arabia has confirmed the Jazan and Najran airport hits and the three wounded. It has not, in the statements available on Tuesday, confirmed a hit on King Khalid or a fire at Rabigh. The gap between the claim and the confirmed list is the part that still needs a second official line.

Saree tied the operations to 60 Saudi airstrikes and missile attacks over the previous 24 hours on Sanaa and on Al-Jawf, Taiz, Hajjah, Saada and Marib. That number is his. The Saudi-led coalition has not published a matching strike count for that day. The ground context is the offensive further south. Yemeni government forces have said they took Dhubab and ground near Bab al-Mandeb. The airport strikes sit on the other side of that move: Houthi fire into southern Saudi Arabia while coalition aircraft hit Houthi-held provinces.

Gulf Cooperation Council secretary-general Jassim al-Budaiwi called attacks on airports and civilian facilities a dangerous escalation, and asked other governments to take a firm stance. Kuwait's foreign ministry condemned what it called continued attacks on Saudi Arabia and accused the Houthis of hitting civilians and economic sites. Neither statement added a casualty figure of its own. Both treated the airports as civilian targets, which is the legal framing Riyadh will use if it takes the strikes to a wider forum.

Jazan and Najran are the two Saudi cities closest to the Yemen border, and their airports have been in the Houthi target set in earlier rounds of the war. A confirmed hit with three wounded is smaller than the 2019 strikes on Saudi oil plants, and it is not nothing for the airlines using those fields. The authority has not said whether either airport closed, for how long, or which flights diverted. That operational detail is the piece passengers and insurers will look for next, and it was not in Tuesday's statement.

The wider claim set, Riyadh airport and Rabigh, would change the scale if confirmed. A disruption at King Khalid is a national aviation event. A fire at an Aramco refinery is an energy event. Until the civil aviation authority or the energy ministry confirms either, they remain Houthi claims set against a confirmed pair of border-airport strikes. The confirmed facts are the two airports, Monday evening, three people hurt, material damage, and a GCC statement calling that an escalation.