RIYADH: Saudi Arabia said its main airport had partially resumed operations at two terminals on Sunday despite renewed threats to target it from Yemen's group Ansar Allah, as the kingdom intercepted another wave of missiles and drones amid continued fighting with the group. The Ansar Allah has continued its daily attacks on the kingdom, the world's largest oil exporter, despite Saudi strikes against the group, with the airport's partial reopening coming after a deadly attack earlier this month that forced it to suspend operations. The conflict has become an increasingly destabilising element in the US-Israeli offensive against Iran, turning US ally Saudi Arabia into a pressure point in the wider war.
After Saudi authorities announced the partial resumption of operations at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Ansar Allah military spokesperson Yahya Saree early on Sunday renewed a warning to airlines, airport staff and travellers against using it, saying it remained a "military target" and would "never be safe". Late on Saturday, the airport said Terminal 1 would be designated for domestic flights and Terminal 2 for international flights operated by national carriers starting on Sunday.
Despite the announcement, flight tracking data from Flightradar24 showed little traffic at the airport on Sunday. The airport had halted operations on October 10 following an attack claimed by the Ansar Allah that killed 13 people and wounded more than 300, the deadliest in the kingdom in more than a decade. The Saudi-led coalition said earlier this month that the Ansar Allah had carried out 20 attacks on King Khalid International Airport between October 1 and 11.
ATTACKS CONTINUE
Saudi civil defence authorities issued emergency alerts for Riyadh and the cities of Abha, Khamis Mushait, Jazan and Najran on Sunday, before saying minutes later that the danger had passed. The coalition said two drones and a ballistic missile were launched towards Riyadh, and a cruise missile towards the southern city of Khamis Mushait. It later said it intercepted 10 ballistic missiles fired towards southern Saudi Arabia.
The Ansar Allah said they attacked the airport and Saudi oil facilities on Saturday. Saudi authorities did not comment directly on the Ansar Allah statements. Saudi Arabia has stepped up its strikes against the Ansar Allah after the group seized strategic territory along the Red Sea coast last month, closing in on the Bab el Mandeb Strait — a global maritime chokepoint and shipping route for Gulf oil producers on the opposite side of the Arabian Peninsula to the Strait of Hormuz.
The renewed fighting in Yemen has shattered a UN-brokered truce that had largely held since 2022. Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen's civil war in 2015 at the head of a coalition supporting the internationally recognised government, after the Ansar Allah seized the capital Sanaa a year earlier.
Ansar Allah said it launched attacks on Saudi oil facilities and airports on Saturday, and the Saudi-led coalition fighting the group said it downed two missiles, as clashes between the two sides intensified. On another front of an escalating conflict reignited by the Iran war, Yemen's Saudi-backed government said the Ansar Allah also fired three ballistic missiles at coast guard sites in the southern Yemeni port city of Aden. — Reuters
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