New Houthi attack on Riyadh airport, death toll rises

King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh has been hit for the second time in a few days. According to the Saudi General Authority of Civil Aviation, on October 12 a new attack on the airport caused the death of a Pakistani resident and injured eleven people.

This toll adds to that of the first attack, which occurred on October 10 against the same airport. According to the same Authority, that episode had caused twelve deaths and three hundred nine injuries. Among the victims, the Saudi source indicates four Saudi citizens and eight residents of various nationalities, without specifying their exact origin.

On the day of the second attack, the Saudi-led coalition announced that it had intercepted three ballistic missiles aimed at Riyadh and at the city of Khamis Mushait. The episode is part of a sequence involving, with different targets, more than one location in the country: not only the capital’s airport, but also an urban center at a distance.

The material gathered offers an element of indirect connection: in the same period, on the energy markets front, the October 10 attack on Riyadh’s main airport is attributed to the Houthis, the Yemeni movement, in reports dedicated to the crude oil reaction. The price of Brent touched $105.63 a barrel overnight before falling back, in what market sources explicitly link to the attack on the Saudi airport. This is the only point, in the material available, where an explicit attribution of responsibility for the attacks appears.

The two statements from the General Authority of Civil Aviation, released through the Saudi news agency SPA, remain the only source of the casualty figures made known so far. No independent confirmation of the numbers is present in the material gathered for this reconstruction: these are figures communicated by the authorities of the affected country, not verified by third-party sources.

There are no indications, in the available sources, regarding the airport’s operational conditions after the second attack or the extent of the damage to infrastructure. Likewise, no official statements emerge — neither Saudi nor Yemeni — explicitly claiming political or military responsibility for the two episodes: the Saudi source, in the two statements, limits itself to quantifying the dead and injured.

The interception of the three ballistic missiles announced on October 12 concerns, as mentioned, two distinct destinations: the capital Riyadh and Khamis Mushait. This is a detail that signals a broader range of action than just the international airport, although the material gathered does not allow establishing whether the intercepted missiles were connected to the attack on the airport that occurred the same day or constituted a separate episode.

The tolls of the two episodes remain distinct in the two statements from the General Authority of Civil Aviation: twelve deaths and three hundred nine injuries on October 10, one death and eleven injuries on October 12.