Fire burns at a fuel tank near Riyadh airport after Saudi Arabia issues an air raid alert

Spread the Word

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Smoke and flames rose from a fuel tank near Riyadh’s main airport on Saturday, hours after Saudi authorities sent an overnight air raid alert to residents.

Firefighters worked to put out the fire on a burnt-out tank carrying the logo of the state oil company Aramco, close to King Khalid International Airport, Agence France-Presse reported.

Reuters video and photographs showed a pillar of black smoke rising over the area, with the airport highway and the main terminal building in the foreground.

Saudi Arabia has not said what caused the fire. It has not commented on the threat named in the overnight warnings, and has not identified where it came from.

No party has claimed responsibility for the incident at the airport.

The flight tracking site FlightRadar24 listed King Khalid International Airport at 5.0, its maximum disruption index, a reading it defines as major problems with long delays and several cancelled flights.

Saudi civil defence sent the alerts to phones overnight, covering Riyadh and the town of al-Kharj to the east of the capital, before giving the all-clear on Saturday morning.

“The area is under a hostile aerial threat,” read a message received by residents, which told them to stay indoors.

Journalists heard two explosions before civil defence lifted the alert about half an hour later.

Hours after the early morning alert, residents said they heard what sounded like a further round of explosions across parts of the capital. They spoke on condition of anonymity.

“In the direction of the airport, we saw black smoke and fire,” one resident said.

“I heard the alarm, then my windows shook,” another said. “It was definitely scary. I was not expecting this.”

A third described the episode as terrifying. “I was extremely anxious, especially because, unlike previous times, the all-clear signal didn’t come right away,” that resident said.

It was the first air raid alert issued for Riyadh since fighting in neighbouring Yemen intensified this month.

Warnings had been sent overnight to residents of several Saudi regions, AFP reported.

The episode came days after Saudi Arabia accused the Houthis of targeting Mecca on Wednesday, calling it a “cowardly terrorist attack” on the holy city.

The Houthis denied that accusation and called it a “worn-out lie”.

The group has separately said it carried out drone attacks on Najran airport and an Aramco site in southern Saudi Arabia.

The UN Security Council condemned continued Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia in a statement on Friday.

It said the attacks had affected civilian and energy infrastructure and had injured civilians, including women and children.

The council also condemned the Houthi offensive inside Yemen. The International Organization for Migration said on Wednesday that close to 105,000 people had fled their homes.

The council’s 15 members called for practical cooperation to stop the Houthis obtaining arms, military training, financing and other military assistance, and said all states must enforce the UN arms embargo on the group.

Houthi forces moved south through southern Hodeidah in early September, taking Hays and Khokha before entering Mokha, which government forces and the National Resistance left to reposition, Yemen Monitor reported.

The International Organization for Migration had put the number who fled at about 46,000 by 11 September.

The shelter and site coordination cluster tracked roughly 15,400 newly displaced households by 13 September and said the figures were changing from day to day.

The cluster said the Taiz-Mokha road had been disrupted, the main road to Maqbanah was blocked and there were clashes on the road between Mokha and Aden.

Yemen’s Human Rights Ministry accused Houthi forces on 18 September of attacking and looting Saudi-funded humanitarian and medical facilities on the western coast. The Houthi authorities have not answered that accusation publicly.

Yemen’s foreign minister, Afrah al-Zouba, said on Saturday that events on the coast did not give the Houthis the right to impose a fait accompli by force, the state news agency Saba reported.

The World Health Organization says about 60 per cent of health facilities in Yemen are fully operational.

The United Nations humanitarian plan for 2026 puts more than 22 million people in need of assistance, with 18.3 million acutely food insecure and more than 2.2 million children under five acutely malnourished.

The plan counts 5.2 million internally displaced people and seeks $2.16 billion to reach 12 million of them.

AFP said the disruption to the Saudi capital added to pressure on a global economy already strained by nearly seven months of war between the United States and Iran.

The Yemeni Network for Rights and Freedoms said it documented 958 violations between 3 and 11 September in Hays and Khokha in Hodeidah and in al-Wazi’iyah, Mawza, Mokha and Dhubab in Taiz.

The group said raids affected 356 homes and facilities that were stormed or looted, among them 11 government facilities. Those counts come from one monitoring group and have not been matched by a second tally.

Yemen Monitor reported that Houthi forces had moved medical equipment from hospitals in Mokha and Khokha towards Sanaa. The outlet said it could not verify how much was taken or where it went.

It also reported that Houthi technical teams had been sent to Mokha, Khokha, Hays and Dhubab to reconnect those areas to networks run from Sanaa, and that Starlink terminals held by residents were being confiscated.