12 Killed, 300+ Hurt as Missile Strikes Riyadh Airport’s Domestic Terminals

RIYADH

A missile tore into King Khalid International Airport on Saturday afternoon, striking the complex that houses terminals 3 and 4 — the domestic terminals — and killing 12 people. More than 300 others were injured, some critically. It was the third strike on the airport this week, and by Sunday the condemnations were arriving from every capital that matters in the region.

The figures come from Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation authorities, quoted by the Associated Press early Sunday. The dead, according to the Saudi statement, included four Saudi citizens as well as two Bangladeshi nationals, a Palestinian, an American citizen, an Egyptian, a Jordanian, a Syrian, and a Sudanese. The injured were being treated at several hospitals, and the statement described some of the wounds as critical.

A regional official told the AP, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media, that the missile struck the airport complex housing terminals 3 and 4 for domestic flights. Witnesses described chaos inside the building. One witness told Agence France-Presse they were waiting to board a flight when they heard the explosion; another, quoted by Yahoo’s coverage, said: “I was on gate 403… I saw 401 hit; I saw injured in front of my eyes. Everyone was running.”

Who’s being blamed

A Saudi-led coalition blamed the attack on Iran-backed Houthi rebels in neighboring Yemen, describing the strike as a “full-fledged war crime” that a diplomatic source attributed to a missile, according to LiveMint’s reporting. The AP noted that the Saudi civil aviation statement itself did not assign blame — the attribution to the Houthis came from the coalition and from a diplomatic source.

The Houthis, for their part, had already claimed attacks earlier in the week on the same airport — strikes that killed three Saudis, including a pilot, according to AP reporting carried by the Hindu BusinessLine. Saturday’s was the latest in what LiveMint describes as an unprecedented wave of Houthi strikes on the kingdom since a truce in the group’s long-running war with Yemen’s Riyadh-backed government unraveled in July. Previously covered the earlier wave in our day-by-day account of the airport attacks, and the oil-market fallout from the first Houthi-claimed strike in our earlier report.

The context matters: the fronts of the Iran war have widened to include the recent surge in fighting between the Houthis and Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces, the AP reports — a front we’ve been tracking in the Yemeni government’s offensive on Houthi supply routes.

India and Pakistan respond

India’s Ministry of External Affairs issued a statement on Sunday, October 11, condemning the strikes in blunt language. “We strongly condemn the repeated attacks on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport over the past few days, including the dastardly attack on October 10, which have led to loss of lives, injuries and damage to property,” the ministry said, calling the repeated attacks on civilians and civilian targets “unacceptable” and demanding they cease immediately. The statement expressed condolences to the families of the deceased, wished the injured a speedy recovery, and declared India’s solidarity with the Saudi people and government “in defence of their sovereignty.”

Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif posted his condemnation on X. “I strongly condemn the heinous attack carried out by the Houthis militia on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh,” he wrote. “Attacks targeting civilians and vital infrastructure are utterly unacceptable and pose a serious threat to regional peace and stability. These violent acts, which constitute a flagrant violation of international law, must cease immediately.”

Sharif went further than most, invoking the Mecca Al-Mukarramah Joint Defense Agreement — the defense pact signed on August 7, which also includes Turkiye — and its doctrine of collective deterrence: an attack against one signatory is treated as an attack against all of them. “We reaffirm our unwavering commitment to the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the integrity of its territories, and its security,” he wrote, emphasizing what he called the deep fraternal ties binding the two countries.

Washington weighs in

Shortly after the attack on Saturday afternoon, President Donald Trump said he was evaluating whether the United States should join Saudi strikes against the Houthis. “We may. We’re going to look at it,” Trump said. “We just found out about the recent attack. So we’ll make a decision. We move very quickly.” According to the New York Post, Trump also said he plans to speak to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned the strike and confirmed in a post on X that an American citizen was among those killed. “These reprehensible attacks demonstrate a blatant disregard for innocent civilian life. They must stop now,” Rubio wrote, expressing Washington’s solidarity with the kingdom and offering condolences to the victims’ families. The U.S. Embassy in Riyadh said it was “aware of attacks” and “strongly recommends all U.S. citizens avoid this airport and surrounding areas.”

The airport is shut

Saudi civil aviation authorities suspended airport operations on Saturday. The closure was later extended by 24 hours until 9 p.m. Sunday, according to the flight tracking platform Flightradar24, as reported by LiveMint. Flights were diverted or cancelled, and passengers were advised to check their flight status with their airlines. The BBC reported that the Houthis warned airlines and passengers not to use Saudi airports after the deadly strike.

The scale is hard to overstate. Saturday’s attack was the deadliest in the kingdom since May 2015, when a suicide bombing by Islamic State militants killed 21 worshippers in a Shia mosque in the eastern Qatif governorate, according to LiveMint. It was also, the AP reports, the deadliest attack in any Gulf Arab country since the start of the Iran war. And the AP adds that the attack — the latest of several in the past week on the airport — is expected to increase Saudi pressure on allies, including the United States, to provide military support for the kingdom.

That pressure, if Trump’s Saturday comments are any guide, may be about to produce results. The region is watching what “we move very quickly” looks like.