Saudi says Riyadh airport partly reopens despite renewed Houthi threats but little traffic

• Saudi Arabia partly reopened Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport after an Oct 10 Houthi attack killed 13 people, but flight traffic stayed very low.
• The Houthis said the airport was still a “military target” and warned it would “never be safe”, as missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia continued.
• The wider Yemen war is worsening regional tensions, shattering the UN truce and putting Saudi Arabia under pressure near key Red Sea and Gulf shipping routes.

Saudi Arabia said its main airport resumed operations at two terminals on Oct 25 even as Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis vowed to keep striking the facility, saying it remained a “military target”.

King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh had halted operations on Oct 10 following an attack claimed by the Houthis that killed 13 people, the deadliest in the kingdom in more than a decade.

Saudi Arabia intercepted another wave of missiles and drones on Oct 25 as fighting with the militant group continued unabated.

The conflict has become an increasingly destabilising element in the US-Israeli offensive against Iran, turning US ally Saudi Arabia into a pressure point in the wider war.

Flight tracking data shows little traffic

After the Saudi authorities announced the partial resumption of operations at the airport, Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree vowed the facility would “never be safe” and urged airlines, airport staff and travellers not to use it.

Late on Oct 24, the airport said Terminal 1 would be designated for domestic flights and Terminal 2 for international flights operated by national carriers starting the next day.

Despite the announcement, flight tracking data from Flightradar24 showed little traffic at the airport on Oct 25.

The Saudi-led coalition said earlier in the month that the Houthis had carried out 20 attacks on the airport between Oct 1 and 11.

Missile and drone attacks continue

Saudi civil defence said on Oct 25 that shrapnel from the interception of two ballistic missiles launched by the Houthis over Khamis Mushait and Ahad Rafidah injured two people and damaged residential buildings and vehicles.

The civil defence authorities earlier issued emergency alerts for Riyadh and the cities of Abha, Khamis Mushait, Jazan and Najran on Oct 25, before saying minutes later that the danger had passed.

The coalition said two drones and a ballistic missile were launched towards Riyadh, and a cruise missile towards the southern city of Khamis Mushait. It later said it intercepted 10 ballistic missiles fired towards southern part of Saudi Arabia.

The Houthis said they attacked the airport and Saudi oil facilities on Oct 24 but the Saudi authorities did not comment directly on the statements.

Saudi Arabia has stepped up its strikes against the Houthis after the group seized strategic territory along the Red Sea coast in September, closing in on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait – a global maritime chokepoint and shipping route for Gulf oil producers on the opposite side of the Arabian Peninsula to the Strait of Hormuz.

The renewed fighting in Yemen has shattered a UN-brokered truce that had largely held since 2022. Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen's civil war in 2015 at the head of a coalition supporting the internationally recognised government, after the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa a year earlier. REUTERS