On Sunday morning the glass business quarter of Riyadh became the latest backdrop to the war in Yemen. Residents heard a heavy bang; soon afterwards attention turned to an Aramco office block in the King Abdullah Financial District, where panes had shattered and the cladding looked scraped.
Officials at the Energy Ministry preferred a cautious phrase, calling the episode an “attempted attack”. They said fragments falling from the sky had done only light damage to a company administration building and that no one had died or been hurt. A Reuters correspondent who inspected the tower itself painted a harsher picture: storey after storey with its windows punched out.
Coalition spokesman Major General Turki al-Maliki listed what the air shield had brought down: a pair of ballistic missiles aimed at the capital, a separate projectile toward the Eastern Province, two further intercepts in the south and one unmanned aircraft. He blamed Yemen’s Houthi movement, which is backed by Iran. People who spoke to AFP, asking not to be named because they feared for their safety, insisted the Aramco high-rise had taken a hit; two more onlookers pointed to smashed glass and a wounded facade.
The latest barrage comes after months of tit-for-tat raids that began when a truce agreed in 2022 broke down this July. Houthi forces have since gone after airports, harbours and fuel plants inside the kingdom. Al Jazeera notes that an assault on Riyadh’s airport on 10 October killed no fewer than 13 people and wounded over 300. Late on Saturday, just hours before the new barrage, the education ministry had only just invited pupils in the capital back into school buildings after a long stretch of lessons from home.
UN figures put the human cost in Yemen since the guns returned at more than 1,600 lives lost and about 300,000 people driven from their homes. The financial district, packed with offices, shops, apartments and a busy metro stop, is meant to showcase Saudi Arabia’s modernising plans. A blow against that skyline would raise the stakes sharply.
