An attack on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh on Saturday killed 12 people and wounded 309, some of them seriously, according to Saudi Arabia's civil aviation authority. It was the deadliest strike on Saudi soil since May 2015, when an Islamic State suicide bombing killed 21 worshippers in the eastern Qatif governorate. The victims included four Saudi citizens as well as two Bangladeshis and one national each from the United States, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Palestine and Sudan. A witness told AFP he saw a strike hit the domestic terminal, with injured people running past him near gate 401.

While Yemen's Houthis did not claim the strike, they threatened new attacks on the kingdom's airports — sparing only the holy cities of Mecca and Medina — and warned passengers not to travel. "The airports and airspace are exposed to targeting and constitute a theatre of operations for our forces," military spokesman Yahya Saree wrote on X. A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition attributed the strike to the Iran-backed group, calling it a "full-fledged war crime," and a diplomatic source also attributed it to a Houthi missile. The strike capped a week in which the group intensified attacks on the Riyadh airport, where three more people were killed on Thursday, and on other key targets in the world's largest crude oil exporter.

Authorities suspended airport operations into Sunday, with air-traffic monitor Flightradar24 reporting the closure extended until 9 p.m. local time, and one aviation source said radar and communications systems were damaged and runways needed assessing. The US, Canadian, German and Spanish embassies warned citizens to avoid the airport, and several embassies were barring staff from using it over the next week, according to a senior Western diplomat speaking to AFP. The US embassy also said staff must now request permission to use airports in Dammam and Jeddah. The attack prompted a rare mass call-up of doctors, a medical source said, and Riyadh schools switched to remote learning for the second time in a month.

President Donald Trump condemned the attack as "not acceptable" and said he was looking at joining Saudi strikes against the Houthis. The coalition vowed to respond, and Houthi media reported two Saudi strikes hit Sanaa governorate on Sunday. The escalation comes as Yemeni government forces, backed by Saudi Arabia, advance against Houthi territory captured last month around the Bab al-Mandab strait, a chokepoint for Red Sea oil and cargo shipping. The timing compounds the shock: the WPC Energy Congress opened in Riyadh on Sunday, drawing around 25,000 invitees, and Haaretz analysis by Zvi Bar'el argues that a Saudi Arabia under attack could dictate the timing of a U.S. war against Iran. Condemnations came from Ursula von der Leyen, Pakistan's Shehbaz Sharif and Jordan, which called the strike "brutal."