Houthi attacks on Riyadh and Abha airports kill at least 20
Key Facts
At least 20 people were killed in a series of Houthi attacks on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and Abha International Airport during the week before a report published by The National on October 12, 2026. Both airports came under successive strikes during that period. The death toll coincided with disruption to air traffic in the Saudi capital following the major attack on its airport. The civil aviation authority said all flights had been diverted away from Riyadh, Reuters reported. The attacks' impact thus extended from casualties inside the airports to the diversion of flights bound for the capital.
The initial attacks on Abha and Riyadh airports on October 6 and 7 injured 36 people, according to the Saudi civil aviation authority. Agence France-Presse cited the authority's figures in its coverage of the attacks on the two airports. Casualties in Abha included an Egyptian national killed at the airport, according to Saudi authorities. An Algerian national was also killed there, according to the same authorities cited by the agency. These injuries and deaths occurred in the initial attacks preceding the subsequent missile strike on King Khalid airport in the capital.
On October 10, a Houthi missile struck King Khalid International Airport, according to Saudi authorities cited by The National. Authorities announced an initial death toll of 12 from the strike. The strike also injured 309 people, according to the same announcement. The number injured in this strike alone exceeded the reported injury toll from the initial attacks on Abha and Riyadh airports combined. Those earlier attacks had injured 36 people on October 6 and 7, compared with the larger number announced by authorities after the October 10 strike.
Riyadh airport came under a subsequent attack on October 11, 2026, killing 1 person, according to an Agence France-Presse report. The attack also injured 11 people, as strikes on the airport resumed after the attack the previous day. In a development concerning victims of the earlier attack, the Indian embassy announced that one of its nationals had died of his wounds. The embassy said the national died on Sunday after being injured at the airport the previous day, the agency reported. His death was announced as the capital faced the subsequent attack, which added further casualties to the series of attacks on Saudi airports.
The escalation followed the collapse of a ceasefire reached by Saudi Arabia and the Houthis in 2022, according to Reuters. The agency said the agreement collapsed during the summer of 2026, before the series of airport attacks in October. Assessing the limits of protection against such strikes, Nawaf Obaid of the Department of War Studies at King's College London said repeated, simultaneous attacks posed a challenge to interception systems. He added, in remarks carried by The National, that "no existing system, including those protecting the United States, can guarantee the interception of repeated, simultaneous attacks." On the military front, the anti-Houthi coalition said it had responded by striking 82 targets, according to an AFP report published on October 8, 2026. The coalition described the sites it targeted as "legitimate military targets."
In oil markets, Brent crude futures rose during the October 12, 2026 session amid concerns sparked by the attacks on Saudi Arabia, according to Reuters. Futures gained $1.93 a barrel at settlement. That represented an increase of 1.8% during the session. Futures settled at $106.65 a barrel, their highest settlement since September 15, according to the agency. On the next steps in the confrontation, the anti-Houthi coalition pledged after the subsequent attack on Riyadh airport on October 11 that it would "respond firmly," according to AFP.