Houthis say missiles and drones hit Aramco site near Riyadh as Yemen war widens

Yemen's Houthi movement said it fired ballistic missiles and drones at a Saudi Aramco facility in Riyadh on Saturday, Oct. 3, putting Saudi energy infrastructure back in the line of fire as fighting inside Yemen intensifies. Neither Saudi authorities nor Aramco had confirmed the attack, Al Jazeera reported.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree described a "military operation with ballistic missiles and drones" against Aramco in the Saudi capital, saying the strikes were "precise and direct" and "led to fires breaking out." Al Jazeera said smoke and fire were seen near the facility. Pakistan's Dawn newspaper placed the targeted Aramco facilities south of Riyadh and also reported that Saudi officials had not confirmed the fires.

Coalition reports 97 strikes

The Saudi-led coalition said it had carried out 97 "precise targeting operations" against Houthi reinforcements on the Tor al-Baha front and the Taiz axis, according to Al Jazeera. Col. Majed Abdullah al-Nazili, a spokesman for the forces of Yemen's internationally recognized government, said the operations had targeted "at least 260 Houthi fighters and destroyed or disabled 44 military vehicles." The Houthis' Al-Masirah TV, for its part, said Saudi aircraft hit Sanaa with 26 strikes, Dawn reported. Dawn also reported dozens of casualties on both sides in fighting around Taiz.

A truce that no longer holds

The escalation follows the collapse in July of the truce that had been in place since 2022, Al Jazeera reported. The renewed fighting has driven hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. In September, the Houthis seized the port of Mocha and strategic islands before front lines stabilized, and in late September Saudi Arabia said it intercepted six ballistic missiles fired at Yanbu and Taif and reported no damage to Aramco sites.

The Oct. 3 claim extends a pattern of Houthi attacks on Saudi soil in recent weeks, including claimed strikes on Riyadh and Yanbu that coincided with a fire at an Aramco depot. Riyadh has already used the U.N. stage to argue that the world has failed to keep Gulf shipping lanes open, and the Bab al-Mandeb strait now sits close to an active front.

The humanitarian picture is worsening alongside the military one. The World Food Programme says 75% of Yemen's population cannot meet basic food needs, Dawn reported.

What it means

Until Aramco or Saudi officials say what, if anything, was hit, the physical damage remains unknown, and the sources reviewed carry no figures on any impact on output or oil prices. The strategic signal is clearer. A claimed strike on Aramco in the Saudi capital, following missile fire at Yanbu and Taif, signals that the Houthis are willing to aim at the core of the kingdom's energy system rather than only at border areas. With the 2022 truce gone, Mocha in Houthi hands and the coalition answering with dozens of strikes, both Saudi production sites and the Red Sea approaches are now inside the theater of war. That raises the stakes for any mediation: the longer the exchange continues, the harder it becomes to wall off Gulf energy flows from Yemen's internal conflict.