Third Riyadh Airport Blast Kills 12 as President Trump Says US May Join Strikes

A missile struck a complex at Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport on Saturday, in the third attack on the airport in a single week and by far the deadliest. The complex housed the domestic terminals, three and four. Saudi aviation authorities said twelve people were killed and three hundred nine were wounded.

The dead included four Saudis, two Bangladeshis and one American, along with citizens of Palestine, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Sudan. More than a dozen ambulances rushed to the scene, parts of the facility were evacuated, and every flight was diverted or cancelled as the response unfolded at one of the kingdom's main aviation hubs.

Reuters reported that the Houthis claimed the attack, though the Saudi aviation authority's own statement assigned no blame. Notably, the kingdom's early warning system failed to issue an alert beforehand. The American embassy told citizens to avoid the airport, and the British, Irish and Canadian embassies issued their own warnings. Kuwait Airways joined Etihad and Qatar in cancelling Riyadh flights into Monday. Saudi officials nevertheless insisted that the country's energy and investment conferences would go ahead as planned.

A new American dimension then emerged. Asked outside the White House on Saturday whether the United States would join Saudi strikes against the Houthis, President Trump said, "We may. We're going to look at it. We'll make a decision. We move very quickly." The remarks were described as a significant step beyond Washington's current posture, going further than anything the White House has said publicly about joining the Saudi campaign, and the whole region will be parsing every word of the statement.

The Saudis also turned up the pressure on another front. On Saturday, the Saudi-led coalition gave the Houthis three hours to remove weapons from Sanaa's airport and the ports of Hodeidah and Saleef, or those sites would lose their protected status. The exact deadline was never specified, leaving open what happens next at those locations.

From the October 11 episode of The World Briefing Room.