A fresh Houthi strike hit Riyadh’s international airport on Sunday, killing one person and wounding 11 others. It came a day after another deadly attack, claimed by the Yemeni group, forced authorities to suspend operations there.

AFP reported that Saturday’s attack, the deadliest on Saudi soil in more than a decade, marked a sharp escalation in the Yemen war, in which Riyadh has long given military support to the internationally recognised government against the Houthis.

The Iran-backed group on Sunday claimed multiple attacks over the previous 24 hours, including on the airport. It threatened to keep targeting the kingdom’s transit hubs, calling them “a theatre of operations for our forces”.

Hours later, the Saudi-led coalition fighting the group reported that a projectile struck King Khalid International Airport and started a fire. It added that air defences also intercepted a missile nearby.

Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation authority said on X that the latest attack on the airport killed one person, a Pakistani resident, and wounded 11 others.

The tracking site Flightradar24 said on the same platform that authorities had extended the airport’s closure by 24 hours, until 2100 GMT on Monday.

AFP journalists and locals reported hearing multiple blasts in the Saudi capital on Sunday.

“The birds went into a frenzy after the sound. The whole house shook,” said one resident of the Al-Aarid neighbourhood in the north of the city.

The civil aviation authority also reported another attack on Dammam airport in the east, which the Houthis said they had also targeted. A day earlier, the Saudi coalition had reported a projectile landing near the airport.

Shortly afterwards, the coalition reported shooting down a drone, also in the east.

Early on Monday, it said it had also “intercepted and destroyed” a Houthi ballistic missile heading for the southern Saudi city of Khamis Mushait, home to a major military base.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, in a call with his Saudi counterpart, said “insisting on a military approach and disregarding a political solution would further complicate the current situation”, Iran’s state media reported.

He said Tehran was ready to help “initiate dialogue between Saudi Arabia and Yemen and facilitate the achievement of a political solution”, according to the official state news agency IRNA.

The Houthis have stepped up their attacks on the Riyadh airport, where three people were also killed on Thursday. They have also intensified attacks on Saudi oil facilities and tankers in the Red Sea.

Although Saudi Arabia has poured billions into its military, Houthi attacks continue to slip through.

“Saudi air defences have been able to intercept some Houthi missile and drone attacks, but Saudi Arabia is so large that it’s simply impossible for them to consistently defend themselves,” said Thomas Juneau, security analyst at Ottawa University.

The anti-Houthi coalition called Saturday’s attack a “full-fledged war crime” and vowed to “respond decisively”.

Houthi media reported two Saudi strikes in Yemen’s Houthi-controlled Sanaa governorate on Sunday. A spokesman for the Houthi-run health ministry said on X that one of the strikes killed a civilian and wounded five others.

Saturday’s attack drew condemnation from the United Nations and leaders around the world, including US President Donald Trump, who said he was considering joining Saudi strikes against the Houthis.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose country has no diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia, also denounced the “horrific terrorist attack”.

The civil aviation authority said the dead from Saturday’s attack included four Saudi citizens, two Bangladeshis, one American, one Egyptian, one Jordanian, one Syrian, one Palestinian and one Sudanese. It said 309 people were wounded.

The Indian embassy in Saudi Arabia also said one of its citizens died on Sunday after being wounded the day before.

Witnesses to Saturday’s strike described chaos in the aftermath.

“Some had lost a hand or an arm. People were running while carrying injured people, covered in blood,” a 32-year-old Riyadh resident told AFP.

The US, Canadian, German and Spanish embassies in Saudi Arabia have warned their citizens to avoid Riyadh airport.

Australia condemned the Houthi attacks as “unacceptable” on Monday. It had earlier urged its citizens in Saudi Arabia to stay indoors and “shelter in place”.

Saudi Arabia leads an international coalition that has supported Yemen’s government militarily since 2015. This has included seeking to exert control over Yemeni airspace and the airport in the Houthi-held capital, Sanaa.

Juneau said the Houthis now “want to do to Saudi Arabia what Saudi Arabia does to them”.

On the ground in Yemen, Saudi-supported government forces were advancing in their counter-offensive against the Houthis around the Bab al-Mandab strait, a key shipping route, military sources said on Saturday. The Houthis claimed to have repelled them.

Claims by both sides have been impossible to verify independently, as the situation is moving fast on the ground and access for journalists is difficult.