Saudi-led coalition intercepts Houthi missile launched toward Riyadh

Saudi Civil Defense says the threat has been eliminated after an alert was issued through its National Early Warning Platform.

A Saudi-led coalition says it has intercepted and destroyed a Houthi ballistic missile fired at the Saudi capital Riyadh, as the Yemeni armed group says it has launched more attacks in the country.

Coalition spokesman Major General Turki al-Maliki announced the foiled attack on X on Wednesday, days after two separate attacks on Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport killed 14 people and wounded hundreds.

List of 3 items List 1 of 3 The escalation in Yemen is a turning point

List 2 of 3 How Middle East Conflict Threatens Data Centers, Internet Cables

List 3 of 3 Yemen government air strikes on Houthi positions

At the bottom of the list, Saudi Arabia's General Directorate of Civil Defense also issued two warnings through its national early warning platform and later declared that the threat had passed. One warning was related to al-Kharj province in Riyadh province and the other was for the capital.

The Houthis, an armed group also known as Ansarullah (Arabic for God's Supporters), issued a statement saying they targeted Saudi Aramco's facilities in Dhahran, an Aramco refinery in Riyadh and the capital's King Khalid International Airport.

Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Energy confirmed last night that the office building belonging to Aramco in Dhahran was hit.

Any notion that the Saudi-led coalition could stem the conflict in Yemen has been shattered over the past 10 days, which have seen several sites in Saudi Arabia targeted, said Al Jazeera correspondent Zain Basrawi, reporting from Doha, the capital of Qatar.

Houthi attacks on Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport over the weekend left 14 dead and more than 300 injured. Houthi attacks on other airports, including Abha International Airport, where two people were killed, and Aramco facilities have also been reported.

Meanwhile, Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces have launched a counteroffensive in Yemen to retake coastal areas from the Houthis near the Bab al-Mandab Strait at the entrance to the Red Sea, a maritime trade stopover.

Fighting in Yemen between the Iran-aligned Houthis and Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces escalated last month, breaking a UN-brokered ceasefire that had largely been in place since 2022.

Since the capture of this city in 2014, the Houthis have controlled the most populous areas of Yemen, including Sana'a, the capital of this country, forcing the internationally recognized government to flee to southern Yemen.

The World Islamic League on Wednesday condemned the Houthis' continued attacks on Saudi Arabia, saying they were deliberately targeting civilians and civilian areas. The Secretary-General of the League, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Karim Al-Eisa, said their nature confirmed the "criminal approach of these terrorist militias in deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure".

Meanwhile, al-Masira TV channel affiliated with Yemen's Houthis reported that four airstrikes hit the Harib region. The results of these attacks were not immediately clear.

Nawaf Obeid, a security and intelligence analyst and senior fellow at King's College London, told Al Jazeera that while airstrikes are intensifying, "the real ground war has not really started for the Saudi-led coalition".

Obeid broke down the steps in which such an operation could be carried out, saying the first step is "basically hitting the power and energy source that allows the Houthis to operate ... tanks, armored vehicles, trucks."

He said that the second phase of the investigation is "the systematic increase of Houthi control in the region, which is very important".

The third phase includes discussions on how to "start recapturing these territories that the Houthis have gained since the beginning of the war".

Obeid said these "multi-pronged steps" would include "super-specialized" forces, particularly in the mountain war, as the Houthis move the battlefield into difficult areas.