Riyadh Airport Attacked Again? What the Houthis Claim

Yemen’s Ansarullah movement, widely known as the Houthis, has claimed a ballistic missile strike on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, the Saudi capital’s main airport and the site of the deadly October 10 attack that closed it for two weeks. The movement’s military spokesman Yahya Saree stated on November 4 that the missile had hit its target accurately and caused significant material damage, and he repeated his warning to international airlines, their staff and passengers that Saudi airspace was unsafe, with the exception of the skies over Mecca and Medina. No Saudi statement confirming or denying a strike had appeared hours after the claim was issued. The claim follows a now familiar pattern in which the movement presents the airport as a standing military target, with the evident aim of keeping foreign carriers away from Riyadh for as long as the war lasts.

The record of the past month explains why the claim cannot be dismissed out of hand, with Saudi authorities having confirmed a considerable toll from earlier strikes on the same airport. The Saudi government reported on October 9 that three Saudi citizens, among them a Saudia captain, had been killed in attacks on the airport claimed by the Houthis, and the General Authority of Civil Aviation reported 12 dead and 309 injured after the October 10 strike. That toll rose to 13 the following day when an Indian national died of his wounds, according to India’s embassy in Riyadh. The airport was closed for about two weeks and reopened in late October to a limited schedule flown largely by Saudi carriers, with Saree declaring on October 24 that it remained a military target. The coalition has since reported intercepting several ballistic missiles fired towards Riyadh, and says it has struck Houthi missile facilities inside Yemen.

The November 4 claim fell, by coincidence or by design, exactly nine years after the movement’s first ballistic missile attack on the same airport. On November 4, 2017, a missile fired from Yemen towards King Khalid International Airport was intercepted near Riyadh by Saudi MIM-104 Patriot batteries, with debris landing in the airport grounds, and the U.S. Department of Defense later displayed its remnants in Washington as a Qiam class missile of Iranian origin, a finding Tehran rejected. The movement’s arsenal has since grown considerably in range and number, and the October strikes highlighted that a layered Saudi air defence network built largely around the Patriot system has been unable to stop every round fired at the capital, as Silent Dossier has examined in detail.

The claim also comes a day after the U.S. Mission to Saudi Arabia issued a security alert on November 3 requiring Chief of Mission approval for travel through any Saudi airport and barring travel within 20 miles of the Yemeni border. Saree’s statements have not always matched what Saudi authorities later confirmed, and the movement made a similar claim against Dammam airport on November 2, two days before the Riyadh claim. The Houthis had published no imagery of the claimed November 4 impact by the evening of that day, leaving the extent of any damage at the airport unverified.