Three people were killed and 28 injured in Houthi attacks on Abha airport in south-western Saudi Arabia, and powerful explosions rattled Riyadh hours after a Houthi strike hit a building in the area housing Saudi Aramco’s operations centre — a sharp escalation in the war between the kingdom and the Yemeni group.

The Saudi-led coalition said the Houthis had attempted attacks on a number of Saudi airports, ports and oil facilities, Hiru News reported. The casualties it reports were at Abha, close to the Yemeni border.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s top crude oil exporter, launched salvos against the Houthi stronghold in the Yemeni capital Sanaa while the Iran-backed group fired back at sites across the kingdom, the Daily Mirror reported, carrying a Gulf Times report based on AFP material.

The barrages are moving toward the city centre

Most strikes on Saudi Arabia have hit infrastructure on the outskirts of Riyadh, but the Daily Mirror’s account says the barrages “appear to be getting closer to the city centre.” The coalition said it intercepted a missile fired toward the capital on Wednesday.

Residents have been seen parking their cars downtown to look up at the sky. One witness, who asked not to be named, described seeing “a projectile cutting across the sky” above a mall, leaving “a yellowish trail of light followed by a trail of smoke. Then, we heard an explosion.”

“People were calm; no one was speaking. We were scared and all looking up at the sky,” he said.

More blasts were heard on Wednesday as phones received messages warning of an “aerial threat” and urging people to take shelter. The alert was lifted a few minutes later.

Riyadh’s civil defence agency said four people — two women, a man and a child — were wounded by debris from two intercepted Houthi cruise missiles, and that 15 homes were damaged.

The Saudi-led coalition struck oil sites across western Yemen. Spokesman Turki Al-Malki said the attacks targeted facilities used to supply the Houthi effort to “threaten the kingdom, Yemen, the southern Red Sea and waterways.”

The Aramco attribution is new

A Saudi energy ministry official said an Aramco building at Dhahran was struck on Tuesday, causing a “limited fire” but “no casualties or fatalities.” Dhahran houses Aramco’s headquarters, a complex of several buildings and residential compounds.

The Dhahran fire itself is not new — this desk reported it on 11 October. What is new is the attribution. That earlier account recorded the Energy Ministry confirming the building had been “targeted” without any filing linking it to the Houthis, and noted explicitly that Dhahran should not be read as answering which two Aramco facilities Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree claimed on 11 October, because Dhahran was hit two days later.

Wednesday’s filing closes that gap in one direction: it states plainly that a Houthi strike hit a building in the area housing Aramco’s operations centre. It still does not identify the two facilities Saree claimed, which remain unnamed.

Why it matters in Sri Lanka

Saudi Arabia is one of the largest destinations for Sri Lankan migrant workers, and the campaign has already reached Sri Lankan travel. SriLankan Airlines suspended its Riyadh and Dammam services, with the carrier’s stated resumption date of 18 October now sitting against a civil aviation authority position that Riyadh’s airport closure has already been extended once with no reopening date set.

Abha is a new location in that picture. The Saudi aviation authority’s nationality breakdown of the 13 people killed in the 10 October Riyadh airport attack contained no Sri Lankan, and the single fatality the following day was identified as a Pakistani civilian. No nationality breakdown has been published for the three killed at Abha.

Not reported

Neither filing dates the Abha casualties precisely. The Daily Mirror’s account describes Tuesday and Wednesday in Riyadh and Dhahran; Hiru reports the Abha deaths without saying on which day the airport was hit, whether the three killed were passengers, staff or people outside the terminal, or whether the airport remains open.

Neither source says what the Houthis struck at the Aramco operations centre beyond “a building”, how that relates to the Dhahran administrative building the Energy Ministry described, or whether Aramco’s operations were affected. Aramco has still not commented publicly on any strike in this campaign.

The number of Saudi airports, ports and oil facilities the coalition says were targeted is not given, nor is it reported how many of those attempts were intercepted. Casualties from the Saudi strikes on Sanaa and western Yemen are not reported.

Sources: Daily Mirror, Hiru News.