By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Four people have been killed and 10 injured, including a Pakistani national, in two attacks on an airport and an oil field in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, officials said.
The Saudi General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) said two people died and eight were injured on Wednesday evening when King Fahd International Airport in Dammam was attacked. It identified the dead as a Saudi citizen and an Indian resident. It did not say what kind of weapon was used or who was responsible. GACA said on Thursday that operations at the airport had resumed and air traffic had returned to normal.
Earlier on Wednesday, Saudi air defences intercepted a drone aimed at a processing facility at Aramco’s Shaybah oil field, the energy ministry said. Falling debris from the interception killed two people, a Filipino and a Nepali, and injured two others, a Pakistani and an Indian.
The drone also set fire to a contractor’s vehicle outside the facility’s perimeter. The ministry said operations at the field were unaffected.
Riyadh did not name those behind either attack. But they came during a sharp escalation in missile and drone strikes on the kingdom by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi movement.
The Houthis said on Thursday that the Dammam airport was among the sites they had targeted with drones and missiles over the previous 48 hours. Their military spokesman, Yahya Sarea, also listed the Saudi defence ministry’s headquarters in Riyadh, an Aramco facility in the Red Sea city of Yanbu and Abha International Airport in the south. Sarea said the Dammam strike had paralysed air traffic. The group did not claim responsibility for the Shaybah incident.
The Saudi-led coalition supporting Yemen’s government said four drones were shot down over the Eastern Province on Wednesday night. It said another four were intercepted over the Riyadh and Medina provinces on Thursday. On Wednesday, it said it had intercepted seven drones launched towards the kingdom, including in the Medina region, home to the Prophet’s Mosque.
At least 21 people have now been killed in Houthi attacks on Saudi airports since the start of October, according to Saudi authorities. The deadliest was a missile strike on Riyadh’s international airport on 10 October, which killed 13 people and injured 308, the worst attack in the kingdom in more than a decade.
The Houthis say they are retaliating for deadly Saudi air strikes on territory they control in western Yemen. Houthi-run media reported on Wednesday night that at least six people had been killed and 11 injured in air and artillery strikes over the previous 24 hours.
Pakistani nationals have been killed and injured in Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia this month. Islamabad signed a bilateral defence pact with Riyadh in September 2025 and a trilateral agreement with Saudi Arabia and Türkiye in August. It has vowed to safeguard the kingdom’s territorial integrity and security.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan will host his Egyptian, Pakistani, Saudi, British, French and German counterparts in Istanbul on Friday, a Turkish diplomatic source said. It will be the first time the seven countries have met in this format, at Ankara’s initiative.
The ministers are expected to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian issue, the situation in the Strait of Hormuz, Yemen and efforts to end the war in Ukraine. Mr Fidan is expected to stress the need for a diplomatic solution to the war between the US and Iran, and the importance of freedom of navigation in the Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb straits. The source said he would also reiterate Turkish support for Saudi security under the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, signed by Türkiye, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
Fighting between Yemen’s internationally recognised government and the Houthis has intensified since the launch of Operation Dawn of Yemen on 5 October. The offensive, backed by coalition air support, aims to retake Houthi-held territory and restore government control over state institutions, including in the capital, Sanaa.
Yemen’s armed forces said on Wednesday that they had carried out 835 strikes on Houthi targets in 24 hours. They claimed to have neutralised about 285 fighters and commanders and destroyed or disabled about 190 military vehicles and other assets. Those figures have not been independently verified.
The Houthi-run health ministry says 155 civilians have been killed since the civil war flared up three months ago. The government’s health ministry puts the overall death toll over the same period at at least 1,574. More than 256,000 people have been displaced.
The war began in 2014, when the Houthis ousted the government from Sanaa. It escalated the following year after a Saudi-led coalition intervened to restore it. A four-year informal ceasefire began to unravel in July, when the Houthis announced a “maritime embargo” against Saudi Arabia and began attacking Saudi airports, oil facilities and Red Sea tankers. They said they were responding to what they call a Saudi blockade and to an air strike on Sanaa airport that they blamed on the kingdom.
The conflict worsened in September when the Houthis seized part of Yemen’s south-western Red Sea coast near the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a chokepoint for global shipping. Their advance contributed to higher oil prices after six months of war between the US, Israel and Iran.
Pro-government forces said earlier this month that they had retaken territory overlooking the strait in a counter-offensive with Saudi air support. Fierce fighting continues there, around the besieged city of Taiz, and in Marib, al-Jawf, Dhale and Shabwa provinces.
Copyright © 2021 Independent Pakistan | All rights reserved
