Three hurt as strikes hit Jazan and Najran airports

Saudi Arabia's General Authority of Civil Aviation said on Tuesday that two airports near the Yemen border were hit on Monday evening. King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz airport in Jazan and Najran airport took material damage. Three people suffered minor injuries and were taken to hospital.

The authority said specialised teams dealt with the attacks as soon as they occurred. It said it would keep assessing the damage and would take further steps to protect passengers and staff. It did not say whether either airport had closed, or for how long any runway, terminal or fuel point was out of use.

The two airports sit in provinces that share a long land border with Yemen. Jazan is the kingdom's southwestern coastal province, on the Red Sea. Najran lies inland, east of the border mountains. Both have been within range of cross-border fire for most of the war that began after the Houthis took Sanaa in 2014 and a Saudi-led coalition intervened in 2015.

Yemen's Houthis, who also use the name Ansar Allah, said late on Monday that their forces had hit sites across southern Saudi Arabia, including airports and military positions. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree, quoted by Anadolu, described three operations using ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones. He said the first targeted King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and disrupted air traffic. He said the second hit an Aramco refinery at Rabigh, in the Mecca region, and started a fire. He said the third hit Abha airport, the Khamis Mushait base and the Akfa camp in Asir, plus sites in Najran and Jazan.

Saudi officials have confirmed the Jazan and Najran airport strikes and the three minor injuries. They have not, in the statements carried on Tuesday morning, confirmed a hit on King Khalid airport in Riyadh or a fire at the Rabigh refinery. Those remain Houthi claims until the civil aviation authority, Aramco or the defence ministry says otherwise.

Saree framed the salvo as a reply to what he called 60 Saudi airstrikes and missile attacks in the previous 24 hours. He named Sanaa and the provinces of Al-Jawf, Taiz, Hajjah, Saada and Marib. The Saudi-led coalition said early on Tuesday that it had destroyed a ballistic missile launch platform in Sanaa, which the Houthis have held since 2014.

Gulf Cooperation Council secretary-general Jassim al-Budaiwi called the airport strikes a dangerous escalation and asked other governments to take a firm line against attacks on civilian infrastructure. Airport terminals, control towers and fuel farms are civilian objects under the ordinary rules of air navigation, even when a military runway sits nearby. Jazan and Najran are civil airports. A strike on either one raises the cost of insurance for carriers that still serve the southern network, and it forces dispatchers to decide whether a diversion to Abha, Khamis Mushait or further north is safer.

The timing sits inside a wider push by forces loyal to Yemen's internationally recognised government. Those forces, backed by Saudi air power, said on Monday they had taken Dhubab and other positions near the Bab al-Mandeb strait. Coalition spokesman Major General Turki al-Maliki said about 100 fighter jets were supporting that ground move and that the coalition had put air protection over the strait. The strait is the narrow gate between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Oil, grain and container ships use it to reach Suez. A ground fight there and a missile fight against Saudi airports are not the same operation, but they are running in the same week, and each one changes the other's risk.

For passengers, the immediate fact is narrower. Three people are injured, both of them described by the Saudi authority as minor cases, and two border airports have physical damage that has not yet been itemised in public. For the Houthis, a claimed hit on Riyadh's main airport and on an Aramco site at Rabigh would be a return to the deep-strike pattern of earlier years of the war. Until Riyadh confirms or denies those two claims with the same specificity it used for Jazan and Najran, the verified picture stops at the two southern airports.

The next useful number is not a slogan. It is whether GACA publishes a damage list, a reopening time, and a passenger count for the Monday evening banks of flights. If Rabigh or King Khalid is later confirmed, the civilian target set is larger than the border provinces. If it is not, Saree's account and the aviation authority's account remain in open conflict on the deepest strikes of the night.