US orders some diplomats and families to leave Saudi Arabia over Houthi attacks

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WASHINGTON, United States — The US State Department ordered nonemergency employees and the families of government staff to leave its mission in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.

Spokesperson Tommy Pigott announced the order in a social media post.

He said Iranian-supported Houthis had increasingly engaged in hostilities against Saudi Arabia.

Pigott said the group had struck civilian airports and other critical infrastructure, causing civilian casualties and severe travel disruption.

“The safety and security of Department personnel and their families remain our highest priority,” Pigott said.

He rejected an earlier media report that Washington planned departures from embassies across the Gulf, calling it inaccurate.

Four US officials told Reuters that American missions in other Gulf states would also order family members out. The State Department has not confirmed that.

The US embassy in Riyadh issued a security alert the same day, warning of the possibility of further Houthi attacks.

The order followed two attacks in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province on Wednesday.

Air defences intercepted a drone that tried to hit a processing facility at the Shaybah oil field in the morning, an official source at the Saudi Ministry of Energy said.

Falling debris killed two residents, a Filipino national and a Nepali national, the source said. A Pakistani and an Indian were injured.

A fire broke out in a contractor’s vehicle outside the facility’s perimeter, according to the same account. Operations at the field, which Saudi Aramco runs, were not affected, the source said.

India’s embassy said one Indian national was injured. It said it was in contact with Saudi authorities and was awaiting further details.

King Fahd International Airport in Dammam was attacked on Wednesday evening, the Saudi General Authority of Civil Aviation said.

The authority said two people were killed there, an Indian resident and a Saudi citizen, and that eight were wounded.

It identified the wounded as one Saudi, one Nepali, and two each from India, Yemen and Bangladesh. Their injuries ranged from minor to critical, it said.

Flights have resumed and property damage is being assessed, the authority said.

Early accounts of the two attacks put the combined toll at three dead. The figures given by the energy ministry source and the aviation authority add up to four.

Saudi-led coalition spokesman Turki al-Malki said air defences intercepted four drones, including over Medina, and a fifth in the Eastern Province.

The Houthis denied firing at Saudi territory. Yahya Saree, the group’s military spokesman, said it had carried out no “deep” operations inside the kingdom.

Riyadh’s main airport was struck on October 10.

The civil aviation authority said at least 12 people were killed at King Khalid International Airport, among them at least four Saudi citizens and two Bangladeshis, with one victim each from the United States, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, Sudan and Egypt.

It put the number of wounded at that airport at least 309 at its latest tally, and said some were in a critical condition and all were receiving hospital care.

Operations at the airport were suspended for a time after that attack while damage was assessed.

The head of the Houthi media office wrote on X that the group had “shut down Riyadh international airport”.

The group had claimed a separate ballistic missile strike on the same airport two days earlier. The October 10 attack also caused property damage, the aviation authority said.

The Saudi-led coalition called that attack a “full-fledged war crime” and said it would respond. Al-Malki said at the time that a projectile also fell near the Dammam airport.

Qatar condemned the October 10 attack as a direct threat to regional security. Egypt, Jordan and Oman expressed sympathy with Saudi Arabia.

The US, British, Irish and Canadian embassies issued safety advisories afterwards. The US advisory recommended that citizens avoid the Riyadh airport.

Canada advised its citizens against all travel to the Riyadh airport.

US President Donald Trump called that attack “terrible” and said he was weighing whether the United States should join the war against the Houthis.

Washington withdrew many diplomatic staff from the region earlier this year, after Tehran attacked US facilities during the US-Israeli war on Iran that began in late February.

Some of those personnel had returned in recent months. The US embassy and a CIA station in Riyadh came under drone attack in early March.

Fighting in Yemen escalated last month, when Houthi forces took territory on the Red Sea coast.

Government forces backed by Saudi Arabia then began an offensive they call Operation Dawn of Yemen, which they say aims to retake ground including Sanaa.

Pigott did not say how many people the departure order covers, or how long it will stay in place.

The United Nations said in its 2026 humanitarian response plan for Yemen that more than 22 million people in the country need assistance.

The plan recorded 18.3 million people as acutely food insecure and more than 2.2 million children under five as acutely malnourished, of whom 516,157 were severely malnourished.

It sought 2.16 billion dollars to reach 12 million people, and counted 5.2 million people displaced inside Yemen.

The Shaybah field sits in the Rub al-Khali desert near Saudi Arabia’s eastern frontier.