Smoke and Flames Near Riyadh Airport After Saudi Air Raid Alert
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Black smoke and flames rose near Riyadh’s international airport on Saturday, shortly after Saudi authorities issued an air raid alert as the kingdom presses an escalating campaign against Yemen’s Houthi movement.
Firefighters extinguished a blaze on a fuel tank bearing the logo of Saudi oil giant Aramco at a fuel depot near the airport, an AFP journalist said.
Flight-tracking website FlightRadar24 reported “major problems” at Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport, briefly listing it at its maximum disruption index before normal traffic began to resume. The disruption followed an overnight air raid alert from Saudi authorities—the first such warning since fighting in neighboring Yemen intensified this month.
Hours after the early-morning alert, residents told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity, that they heard what sounded like a volley of explosions echo across parts of the Saudi capital.
“In the direction of the airport, we saw black smoke and fire,” one resident said.
Lightning offensive
Yemen’s Houthis have launched a lightning offensive, seizing broad stretches of territory in one of the world’s poorest countries and leaving the internationally recognized government, which is backed by Saudi Arabia, scrambling to respond.
No group had officially claimed responsibility for any attack targeting Saudi Arabia on Saturday.
Saudi Arabia, one of the region’s major powers, has carried out scores of airstrikes on Houthi-held areas but has failed to halt the advance. It has also sought help from its ally the United States, so far without success.
This is the first time since Yemen’s civil war resumed that the Houthis have threatened the Saudi capital, further rattling a global economy already strained by nearly seven months of war between the United States and Iran.
“The area is under a hostile aerial threat,” read a message received by Riyadh residents just before 3 a.m., urging them to stay indoors.
AFP journalists then heard two explosions, before Saudi civil defense authorities lifted the alert about half an hour later.
“I heard the alarm, then my windows shook,” a 27-year-old Riyadh resident living in the city’s north told AFP. “It was definitely scary. I was not expecting this.”
Another resident described the attack as “terrifying.”
Saudi Arabia has not commented on the threat cited in overnight warnings sent to residents in several regions, nor has it identified where the threat originated.
Mecca accusation
The incident comes days after Riyadh accused the Houthis of targeting Mecca on Wednesday, denouncing it as a “cowardly terrorist attack” on Islam’s holy city, which welcomes millions of pilgrims each year, both Sunnis and Shias.
The Iran-backed Houthis strongly denied the accusation, calling it a “worn-out lie.”
The group has reported scores of retaliatory strikes carried out daily by Riyadh since its offensive this month to take over Yemen’s entire Red Sea coast, giving it control of the vital Bab al-Mandab strait.
Riyadh was targeted with waves of attacks during an earlier phase of the war, including a drone strike on the US embassy in the capital’s diplomatic quarter in March.
The United States, according to US news outlet Axios, last week refused a Saudi request to strike the Houthis.
On Thursday, Washington approved a $24.3 billion sale of 48 F-35 fighter jets to the kingdom to help Riyadh “deter current and future threats,” the US State Department said.
‘Escalation trap’
“My read is that Saudi Arabia is entering into a phase of escalation with the Houthis and will respond, but they know the only way this ends is through negotiations,” Anna Jacobs of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington told AFP.
“But both sides have a say in when that can happen, and both sides seem locked in the escalation trap at this stage.”
The United Nations said the renewed fighting has displaced more than 112,000 people, while nearly 3,000 others have fled across the sea to Djibouti.
War in Yemen broke out in 2014, when the Houthis seized control of the capital, Sanaa, and other regions, triggering a military intervention led by Saudi Arabia in March 2015.
A fragile truce reached in 2022 between the warring parties collapsed in July, when the Houthis defied Riyadh’s control of Yemeni airspace by allowing an Iranian aircraft to land in Yemen.
Their recent takeover of the coastline has sparked global concern, with international maritime trade already affected by Iran’s imposition of a blockade on the Strait of Hormuz.
The Houthis insist there is no threat to shipping in the sea lane—except for ships from Saudi Arabia, the world’s leading crude exporter.
The apparent attack came as the Houthis improve their defenses in newly conquered territory along Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, with members of the group telling AFP they have been installing radar and digging tunnels.
Two Houthi sources told AFP that personnel from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards had visited the area in recent days.