At least two people were killed in a strike by the Iran-backed Houthi militia on a major airport in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday evening, as Washington ordered some U.S. diplomatic staff to leave the kingdom following weeks of deadly attacks.
The Saudi authorities said in a statement on Thursday morning that a Saudi national and an Indian resident died in the strike on King Fahd International Airport in Dammam, a city in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province that is home to the state oil giant Saudi Aramco. Eight other people were wounded, the statement said, adding that airport was operating normally on Thursday.
A spokesman for Yemen’s Houthis, Yahya Saree, said on Thursday that the militia had targeted Dammam’s airport. He also said, in the same statement, that the Houthis had targeted the Saudi defense ministry in the capital, Riyadh, along with an Aramco site in Yanbu, and an airport in the southern city of Abha. The Saudi authorities have not commented on those claims.
In a separate incident, two people were killed and two others were wounded on Wednesday when a drone was intercepted over Aramco’s Shaybah oil field, also in the Eastern Province. Falling drone fragments sparked a fire in a contractor’s vehicle, killing a Filipino and a Nepali, the Saudi Energy Ministry said.
The Houthis have been pummeling Saudi Arabia’s aviation and energy infrastructure for weeks, killing at least 22 civilians and roiling energy markets.
The price of oil jumped about 3 percent on Thursday, with the global benchmark topping $112 a barrel, the highest level since mid-May.
Saudi Aramco staff were instructed to leave the company’s headquarters building in Dhahran and to work remotely on Thursday, according to two people familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the company. Aramco did not respond to a request for comment and the Saudi energy ministry referred questions to Aramco.
Saudi Arabia announced a bombing campaign against the Houthis this month in support of the internationally recognized government of Yemen, which has been at war with the Houthis since 2014. That was when the Houthis, a rebel group from the country’s north, seized the Yemeni capital, Sanaa — which they still hold.
A fragile truce in Yemen unraveled earlier this year, and the country has since tipped back into a civil war that the United Nations says has displaced some 260,000 people since August. At least 1,574 people have been killed since then, the World Health Organization said this week.
As the fighting has spilled onto Saudi soil, the United States ordered all “non-emergency government employees and their family members” to leave Saudi Arabia, a State Department spokesman, Tommy Pigott, said in social media post on Wednesday night that cited the Houthis’ attacks, mounting civilian casualties and travel disruptions.
Washington had pulled many diplomatic staff out of the Middle East earlier this year after the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, the Houthis’ main patron. But it started sending some back in late August.
Then in September, the Houthis seized areas of strategic territory on Yemen’s Red Sea coast in a lightning offensive, gaining greater control over a crucial choke point for global trade. In recent weeks, forces affiliated with the Yemeni government and backed by Saudi warplanes have mounted a counteroffensive to retake the territory.
The Red Sea has become an increasingly important route for Saudi oil exports since Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway in the Persian Gulf, after the United States and Israel attacked Iran in late February. The Houthis’ attacks on Saudi oil facilities and tankers traversing the Red Sea have heaped further pressure on energy markets.
Some ships continue to transit the Strait of Hormuz, despite the risks. In the meantime, regional mediators have been trying to negotiate an end to the U.S. war with Iran and a reopening of the waterway.
The U.S. and Israeli militaries have developed plans for renewed strikes against Iran after next month’s American midterm elections, according to U.S. officials and other people briefed on the deliberations.
President Trump said on Wednesday that Washington was not currently negotiating with Iran and “something one way or the other” will happen “fairly soon.”
Iranian attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz have ramped up in recent weeks. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said on Thursday that it had struck four tankers in the northern Persian Gulf that it claimed had been illegally transferring oil. It also said that three more vessels had hit mines in the western Strait of Hormuz. Those attacks could not immediately be independently confirmed.
Shuaib Almosawa contributed reporting from Sanaa, Yemen, Saeed Al-Batati from al-Mukalla, Yemen and Lisa Friedman and Sanam Mahoozi from London.
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