One killed, eight injured in attack on Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd airport

All injured individuals were immediately transported to hospitals, civil aviation says updates to come.

One person has been killed and eight injured in an attack on Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd International Airport in the eastern city of Dammam, the country’s civil aviation authority announced.

All of the wounded, whose injuries range from minor to critical, were transported to hospitals to receive medical attention, the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) said in a statement on Wednesday.

Earlier in the day, two people were killed after Saudi air defences intercepted a drone that was attempting to hit a facility at Saudi Aramco’s Shaybah oilfield, the Ministry of Energy said.

It was the latest in a series of assaults on Saudi airports as conflict intensifies between Houthi forces and the Saudi-backed internationally recognised Yemeni government.

Last week, the kingdom reported that a projectile strike on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport on October 11 killed one person and injured 11. On October 10, the civil aviation authority reported that a separate attack on the same airport claimed the lives of 12 people and injured more than 300.

On Wednesday, the US State Department ordered diplomats and family members to depart from its missions in Saudi Arabia amid the ongoing Houthi attacks. There are also plans to withdraw family members from a number of other US missions in the region, US officials told Reuters.

The US embassy in Riyadh issued a security alert on Wednesday about possible further attacks by the Houthis on Saudi Arabia.