The Saudi-led coalition said on Wednesday that it had intercepted and destroyed a Houthi ballistic missile aimed at Riyadh, the Saudi capital. Coalition spokesman Major-General Turki al-Maliki announced the foiled attack on X. The Yemeni armed group, meanwhile, said it had carried out more attacks on the kingdom.
The announcement came only days after two strikes hit King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh. Those strikes killed 14 people and injured hundreds more, according to the figures cited in the report.
Civil defence alerts and the missile interception in Riyadh
Saudi Arabia’s General Directorate of Civil Defence issued two alerts through its national early warning platform. One covered the Al-Kharj governorate in Riyadh province, while the other was for the capital itself. The directorate later said the danger had passed.
Al-Maliki’s statement was the coalition’s main public account of the missile. It did not, in the material available, describe any damage from the interception.
Houthi claims over Aramco sites and airport attacks
The Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah, which translates from Arabic as supporters of God, issued a statement saying they had targeted several locations. These included facilities of the state oil company Aramco in Dhahran, an Aramco refinery in Riyadh, and the King Khalid International Airport in the capital.
Overnight, the Saudi Ministry of Energy confirmed that an administrative building belonging to Aramco in Dhahran had been hit. Reporter Zein Basravi, speaking from the Qatari capital Doha, said the idea that the Saudi-led coalition could keep the conflict confined to Yemen had been shattered over the previous 10 days. During that period, several sites in Saudi Arabia were targeted.
Houthi attacks have also been reported on other airports. In Abha, two people were killed. The Muslim World League condemned the continued attacks on Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, saying they deliberately target civilians and civilian sites. Its secretary-general, Sheikh Mohammad bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa, described the attacks as showing “the criminal approach of this terrorist militia in deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure”.
Ground offensive and analysis of the Yemen conflict
Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces have launched a counteroffensive to retake coastal territory near the Bab al-Mandeb strait, at the entrance to the Red Sea. The strait is a vital chokepoint for maritime trade. Fighting between the Iran-aligned Houthis and government forces escalated sharply last month, breaking a United Nations-brokered ceasefire that had largely held since 2022.
The Houthis have controlled Yemen’s most populous areas, including the capital Sanaa, since seizing the city in 2014. That move forced the internationally recognised government to flee to southern Yemen. Yemen’s Houthi-affiliated Al-Masirah television reported four air strikes on the Harib district in Marib governorate, though the results were not immediately clear.
Nawaf Obaid, a security and intelligence analyst and senior research fellow at King’s College London, told that air strikes are intensifying but the actual ground war has not really begun for the coalition. He outlined three possible phases. The first would target the power and energy sources that let the Houthis operate, including tanks, armoured vehicles and trucks. The second would focus on the systematic reduction of Houthi control in the region, while the third would address retaking territory the Houthis have gained since the war began. Obaid said these multipronged phases would require specialised troops, particularly for mountain warfare, because the Houthis are moving the battlefield into difficult terrain.
