Ballistic missiles fired by Yemen's Houthi rebels slammed into King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and Abha International Airport this week, killing three people and wounding 36, Saudi aviation officials say — the most direct rebel assault on Saudi soil in years, and a sign of how violently Yemen's civil war has reignited.

The strikes came as Yemen's internationally recognized government, backed by Saudi-led coalition airpower, presses a sweeping new ground offensive it has named "Dawn of Yemen", aimed at retaking the Houthi-held capital, Sanaa, and every inch of territory the Iran-backed movement has controlled since 2014. Presidential Leadership Council chairman Rashad al-Alimi announced the campaign on October 4, casting it as the end of what he called a Houthi "coup." Coalition spokesman Turki al-Maliki said roughly 100 fighter jets are flying in support of government ground troops.

Government forces say they have seized the Bab al-Mandeb Strait area, the port town of Mokha and strategic mountain positions overlooking the Taiz coastline. By October 8, the government was claiming its forces had "neutralized" 1,860 Houthi fighters across more than 2,100 strikes since the offensive began, according to Al Jazeera — figures that, like most battlefield claims from both sides, could not be independently verified. The coalition separately said it had destroyed 82 Houthi military targets, including 11 mountain-based ballistic missile storage sites, in Saada, Hodeidah, al-Jawf and Marib.

Missiles Reach the Saudi Capital

The Houthis have answered with a wave of cross-border strikes. Saudi Arabia's General Authority of Civil Aviation said a Sudanese national was killed and eight people wounded when a missile struck near Riyadh's airport on October 6-7, while an Egyptian and an Algerian were killed and 28 others hurt in a near-simultaneous attack on Abha airport, closer to the Yemeni border. On October 8, the Houthis claimed yet another missile launch at the Riyadh airport; Saudi civil defense said falling debris from an intercepted missile tore into a nursery and a nearby medical complex, though no casualties were reported from that strike, per Khaleej Times/AFP. Flights into Riyadh were delayed and cancelled, and the rebels warned foreign workers to evacuate Saudi oil facilities, days after striking a refinery south of the capital.

Kuwait condemned the strikes as "a flagrant violation of Saudi sovereignty and international law."

Egypt warned the attacks "threaten the security of the whole region," and the Mecca-based Muslim World League branded them "treacherous terrorist attacks." The Saudi-led coalition vowed the Houthis "will not go unpunished."

The human toll inside Yemen is mounting fast. The United Nations estimates more than 200,000 people have been displaced since fighting escalated this summer. Yemen's UN envoy, Abdullah al-Saadi, met UN special envoy Hans Grundberg this week and accused the Houthis of rejecting peace and de-escalation proposals, explicitly ruling out a temporary truce. The government's goal, he said, is to extend its authority nationwide and permanently end the Houthis' capacity to wage war — a far harder line than the shaky 2022 truce that mostly held until the Houthis launched a lightning offensive against government lines on August 6, pushing toward the Bab al-Mandeb Strait by mid-September.

The stakes reach well beyond Yemen's borders. The Bab al-Mandeb corridor has become an even more critical artery for global energy shipments since the U.S.-Israel war with Iran choked off traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, meaning a wider Yemeni-Saudi escalation threatens to rattle oil markets far from the battlefield.