Riyadh Targeted a Third Night as Houthis Threaten America
Saudi Arabia says it intercepted a ballistic missile aimed at the capital and two more fired towards Khamis Mushait. No casualties were reported. Donald Trump said the Houthis were “misbehaving very badly”, and the group replied that American involvement would bring “a swift and painful response”.
King Khalid International has been shut since Saturday’s strike and the closure now runs to Saturday 17 October, so this is a deepening siege rather than a fresh halt. At least twenty people have been killed in a week, among them an American. The threat is the sharpest development: a Houthi political bureau member, Mohammed Al Bukhaiti, said that if the United States joined the campaign “there will be a swift and painful response targeting the US and all its interests in the region”, and warned workers at Saudi oil facilities and airports to stay away because they had “become legitimate targets”. Washington is still only considering joining, while supplying intelligence and targeting. Airlines are voting with their schedules: Qatar Airways has suspended Riyadh and Dammam, Etihad has cancelled flights from Abu Dhabi, and one American carrier has pushed its Saudi launch to March. An urgent review is under way into why missiles keep penetrating Saudi air defences. The energy congress continued ten kilometres away, where Aramco’s chief executive Amin Nasser observed that markets “can diversify suppliers” but “cannot diversify geography”.