Houthi strike on Dammam airport kills two, injures eight

Dammam — Two people, including an Indian national, were killed and eight others injured on Wednesday night in a Houthi missile and drone attack on King Fahd International Airport in Dammam, Saudi Arabia's eastern oil hub, the kingdom's General Authority of Civil Aviation said. The strike is the sharpest escalation yet in a Houthi campaign against Saudi aviation and energy targets that, according to The New York Times, has now prompted the United States to tell some of its diplomats to leave the kingdom.

The Indian Embassy in Riyadh confirmed the Indian national's death and said two other Indians were among the wounded. “Saudi authorities have informed that one Indian national was among two people who unfortunately lost their lives in the attack on Dammam airport yesterday night,” the embassy wrote in a social media post on Thursday, adding that it was contacting the affected families. Airport operations and air traffic had returned to normal after brief disruptions, the Saudi aviation authority said.

The Houthis, who control northern and northwestern Yemen including the capital, Sana'a, said they had also launched missile and drone attacks at the Saudi Ministry of Defence in Riyadh, an Aramco facility in Yanbu and Abha International Airport in the southwest. If Saudi Arabia continues to attack Yemen, “we will resort to major options we did not want to take, and we hold it responsible for the consequences,” the group said, according to the Houthi-aligned Almasirah television.

In a separate claim that could not be independently verified, the Houthis said Saudi forces on Thursday targeted a yacht carrying 14 Indians near Zuqar Island in the Red Sea, and that their own forces were carrying out rescue operations, The Hindu reported. There was no immediate Saudi comment on the allegation. The Indian Embassy has advised its nationals in the kingdom to stay alert and take shelter indoors during aerial attacks.

The exchange marks the unravelling of a fragile truce. Saudi Arabia began bombing Yemen in 2015, months after the Houthis captured Sana'a. Riyadh and the Houthi leadership agreed a ceasefire in 2022 as part of a broader Iran-Saudi rapprochement, but it collapsed in July, in the midst of the U.S.-Iran war, when Saudi Arabia bombed Sana'a airport to stop an Iranian airliner carrying a Houthi delegation from landing. Since then the rebels, who expanded along Yemen's Red Sea coast last month, have attacked Saudi targets, launched a ground offensive against the Saudi-backed government and announced a blockade of Saudi Red Sea ports.

For the families of the dead and the injured, the wait now is for names and repatriation; for the hundreds of thousands of Indians working in the kingdom, it is for word on whether Wednesday's strike was an exception or the start of something wider.