Riyadh’s Airport Closes for the Fourth Time This Week
The Saudi-led coalition says it intercepted two ballistic missiles aimed at Riyadh and one at Khamis Mushait. The Houthi spokesman claims a missile struck King Khalid International and caused “damage and disruption to air traffic”. Saudi civil defence says falling interception debris damaged a kindergarten and a medical clinic in the capital.
The admission about the kindergarten is unusual: Saudi authorities rarely concede civilian damage from the air war. Flight tracking showed the airport closed with no landing for more than eighty minutes and no departure for more than ninety; a witness described passengers being told to abandon checked luggage and leave. No approved source has published a count of cancelled flights, so none is given here. Air India has cancelled Riyadh services until at least the weekend and the Lufthansa group has suspended them through 16 October. The Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree went further than aviation, warning oil workers directly: the armed forces warn “all employees, including experts, engineers and workers at all Saudi oil facilities, against being present in locations that represent targets for our forces, so as not to put their lives at risk”. Turkey and Pakistan are assessing air defence, electronic warfare and technical help for the kingdom under their trilateral agreement, though Turkey’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan drew a line: “Turkey will not be sending troops into another country’s territory to carry out an attack.” Three people were killed and thirty-six injured in the strikes on two Saudi airports earlier this week.