Saudia plane burns at Riyadh airport as the coalition says it stopped three Houthi missiles

A Saudia passenger jet parked at a Riyadh terminal caught fire and was badly damaged on Thursday after Yemen's Houthis launched missiles at Saudi Arabia. The Saudi-led coalition said it intercepted three ballistic missiles. The Houthis said one of them hit King Khalid International Airport. By 15:00 GMT, aviation data firm Cirium counted almost half of scheduled departures from Riyadh cancelled, with 31 further cancellations already on the books for Friday across Saudi airports.

Coalition spokesman Turki al-Maliki said the forces destroyed two missiles headed for Riyadh and one headed for Khamis Mushait, the city near the Yemeni border that holds a major air base. His statement did not report casualties from those interceptions. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the group had fired a ballistic missile at King Khalid International Airport on Thursday afternoon, and that the missile hit, causing damage and disrupting traffic. Witnesses told the Associated Press they heard several explosions in Riyadh, including one at the airport that halted flights. Al Jazeera said it could not independently confirm the hit.

Reuters, citing three people briefed on the matter, reported the damage that can be checked: shrapnel from an interception, or another projectile, struck a Saudia aircraft at a terminal. The jet caught fire. It was parked, not on a takeoff roll. Three people have been killed in the kingdom by this week's strikes, Reuters reported, a toll that covers the wider sequence and not only Thursday's airport fire. The Houthis have told aviation companies to stay out of Saudi airspace. Aircraft operating over the kingdom, they said, are targets, with an exception for the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

That warning is the operational change for airlines. A missile interception over a capital is a security incident. A standing threat against civil traffic, plus a burned aircraft at the terminal, is a scheduling problem. FlightRadar24 showed delayed arrivals and departures at King Khalid through Thursday. Cirium's cancellation share, nearly half of Riyadh departures by mid-afternoon GMT, is the figure dispatchers will use. Air India has cancelled flights to Riyadh on the same security ground. Other carriers have been thinning schedules rather than publishing a formal stop.

The Houthis also warned workers to stay away from energy plants, which the group said it would target. Saudi oil facilities have been on this target list since the 2019 attacks on Abqaiq and Khurais. Thursday's confirmed damage is at an airport, not at a plant. The coalition's account is that the three missiles were destroyed before impact. The Houthis' account is that the airport missile landed. The burned Saudia jet is compatible with either a hit or with debris from an interception. Reuters' sources used both possibilities and did not choose.

Khamis Mushait is the other track. A missile aimed there is aimed at the air base, not at a commercial terminal. The coalition said that missile was destroyed as well. No damage figure has been published for the base. The commercial consequence is concentrated in Riyadh, where a parked aircraft on fire is enough to close a stand and ripple through the bank of departures.

The war these strikes belong to is the conflict between the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition backing Yemen's recognised government. Thursday does not open it. It adds a civil airport, a named airline, and a cancellation rate. For anyone booked through King Khalid this weekend, the useful fact is Cirium's count and the Houthis' airspace warning, not the argument over which missile struck what.