File image.
Yemen’s Houthis (Ansar Allah) announced on October 22 that they had launched ballistic missiles and drones against four targets in Saudi Arabia, including the Defense Ministry headquarters in Riyadh, two international airports and a facility belonging to state oil company Saudi Aramco.
Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, the group’s military spokesman, said in a statement that the operations were conducted over the previous 48 hours and scored direct hits on all four targets.
The targets were the Saudi Defense Ministry in Riyadh, King Fahd International Airport in Dammam, an Aramco facility in the Red Sea port city of Yanbu and Abha International Airport in southwestern Saudi Arabia.
Saree said the attack on King Fahd International Airport disrupted air traffic, while the strike on the Aramco facility in Yanbu started a fire. He did not provide details about the weapons used against each target or the extent of the reported damage.
The statement came as Saudi Arabia reported deadly incidents involving intercepted drones and an attack on King Fahd International Airport that caused casualties and disrupted flights.
The Saudi Civil Aviation Authority said an attack on the Dammam airport late Wednesday killed one Saudi resident and injured eight people, damaging airport facilities and prompting flight diversions. Reuters later reported that two people, including an Indian national, had been killed and eight others injured.
In a separate incident, Saudi Arabia’s Energy Ministry said falling debris from a drone intercepted near Saudi Aramco’s Shaybah oil field killed two foreign residents and injured two others on October 21. The dead were Filipino and Nepali nationals, while the injured were Pakistani and Indian nationals.
The ministry said the interception sparked a fire in a contractor’s vehicle outside the facility’s perimeter but did not affect oil-field operations. Shaybah is in eastern Saudi Arabia and is separate from the Yanbu facility named in Saree’s statement.
Saudi military officials also reported several drone interceptions in recent days. The Saudi-led coalition said on October 21 that it had intercepted and destroyed four drones launched toward the kingdom. The next day, the coalition reported additional interceptions over Riyadh and Medina.
Separately, Reuters reported on October 22 that Saudi Aramco had instructed employees to evacuate its headquarters in Dhahran and work remotely as the fighting intensified. The reason for the order was unclear.
Saree accused Saudi Arabia of carrying out more than 2,900 airstrikes and missile attacks against civilian sites in Yemen over the previous 100 days, claiming that more than 562 people had been killed or wounded, most of them women and children. The figures were not independently verified.
He also warned Riyadh against carrying out threats to target Yemeni tribes, saying the consequences would be “catastrophic and unexpected.” He said the Houthis would resort to major options they had previously been reluctant to use if Saudi Arabia followed through on the threats.
“The Yemeni armed forces will continue their operations deep inside Saudi Arabia in defense of our country and our people,” Saree said, stressing that the operations would continue until the attacks on Yemen stopped and the blockade was lifted.
The Houthis escalated their strikes on Saudi Arabia in recent weeks as they maintained the upper hand on all fronts in Yemen, namely in Taiz and Bab al-Mandab in the southwest of the country. Meanwhile, the kingdom, despite all recent setbacks, appears to be determined to go on with its campaign against the group. In addition to its allies in the Mecca defense pact, Pakistan and Turkey, Riyadh is working on securing support from Egypt and Syria.
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