Saudis say Riyadh airport partly reopens despite renewed Houthi threats

Oct 25 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia said its main airport resumed operations at two terminals on Sunday even as Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis vowed to keep striking the facility, which they called a "military target".

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King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh had halted operations on October 10 following an attack claimed by the Houthis that killed 13 people, the deadliest in the kingdom in more than a decade.

Saudi Arabia said it intercepted another wave of missiles and drones on Sunday as fighting with the militant group continued unabated.

The Houthis said they had launched attacks on the air hub among other sites in the kingdom, including in Khamis Mushait and Jazan. It was not immediately clear if those were the strikes the kingdom said it had blocked.

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.

FLIGHT TRACKING DATA SHOWS LITTLE TRAFFIC

After Saudi authorities announced the partial resumption of operations at the airport, Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree vowed the facility would "never be safe" and urged airlines, airport staff and travellers not to use it.

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 Sunday.

Despite the announcement, flight tracking data from Flightradar24 showed little traffic at the airport on Sunday.

The Saudi-led coalition said earlier this month that the Houthis had carried out 20 attacks on the airport between October 1 and 11.

MISSILE AND DRONE ATTACKS CONTINUE

Saudi civil defense said on Sunday that shrapnel from the interception of two ballistic missiles launched by the Houthis over Khamis Mushait and Ahad Rafidah injured two people and damaged residential buildings and vehicles.

Civil defense authorities earlier 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 Houthis said they attacked the airport and Saudi oil facilities on Saturday. Saudi authorities did not comment directly on the Houthi statements.

Saudi Arabia has stepped up its strikes against the Houthis 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 Houthis seized the capital Sanaa a year earlier.

(Reporting by Yomna Ehab, Eman Abouhassira, Nayera Abdallah, Menna Alaa El-Din and Yasmine Ghania and Muhammad Al Gebaly; Writing by Eman Abouhassira and Nayera Abdallah; Editing by Christina Fincher and David Holmes)

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