"Caught on camera: People in pilgrim white run as a Houthi missile hits Riyadh's airport"

The camera hangs above a quiet airport hall in Riyadh. Barriers mark out the lines. Then a cloud of pink smoke and dust rolls in, and people in white robes start to run.

Many of them wear the plain white cloth that Muslim men put on for umrah, the pilgrimage to Mecca. The CCTV clip, credited to Al Arabiya English, spread across the world on Sunday night after BRICS News posted it. It passed 656,000 views in less than a day.

Here is what Saudi officials have confirmed. On Thursday 8 October, a Houthi attack on King Khalid International Airport killed three Saudi citizens. One was an airline pilot.

How many people died in the Riyadh airport attack?

Saudi Arabia's General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA), which runs the country's airports, gave the toll. It said three Saudi citizens died in Thursday's attacks, and people of several nationalities were hurt. The injuries ranged from minor to serious, Al Jazeera reported.

There were two strikes that day, the Associated Press (AP) reported. The first hit airport buildings. The second hit a plane belonging to Saudia, the national airline.

Saudia named the pilot who died as Captain Hamoud Ali Alkalthami. The company said it felt "profound sadness."

That was not the first death at the airport that week. On Wednesday, GACA said attacks on the Riyadh and Abha airports had killed three people and hurt 36. In Riyadh, a man from Sudan died and eight people were hurt, the South China Morning Post reported. In Abha, near the Yemen border, a Moroccan and an Algerian were killed and 28 people were injured.

Some people online claim 12 people died, including a Palestinian. We could not find that number in any official statement or news report, so treat it as unconfirmed.

Every attack on Saudi airports so far

The strikes started weeks before the clip went viral. This is every attack in our sources, in order.

Sources: Saudi GACA statements as reported by Al Jazeera, AP and the South China Morning Post, 7 to 9 October 2026.

That makes six people killed at Saudi airports in two days, by Saudi Arabia's own count.

Photo: Vanquish0 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Why are the Houthis attacking Saudi airports?

The Houthis are an armed group that controls Yemen's capital, Sanaa. Iran backs them. Saudi Arabia has fought them since 2015.

The war in Yemen had been mostly frozen for years. Al Jazeera says it flared up again after the US and Israel went to war with Iran this year. You can read how that war is shaping fuel prices in our story on Trump's promise to hold off on Iran until the midterms.

The Houthis say the airport strikes pay Saudi Arabia back for its own attacks on the airports in Sanaa and Hodeidah. Al Jazeera's reporter in Sanaa, Yousef Mawry, called it an "airport-for-airport" plan. The goal, he said, is to shut down every airport in Saudi Arabia while Sanaa's airport stays under siege.

A Houthi military spokesman said the group fired a ballistic missile at King Khalid airport. He said it hit its target, caused damage and stopped air traffic.

Is Riyadh airport open after the missile attack?

Yes. Saudia said work at the airport was back to normal by 6pm on Thursday, only hours after the attack. GACA also said flights were running again, Saudi media reported.

Flights were delayed across two days, though, and the Houthis have made a threat that stays on the table. They told airlines to keep out of Saudi airspace. Any plane flying over the kingdom is a target, they said.

They named one exception: The skies over Mecca and Medina, Islam's two holiest cities.

Photo: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Aaron Lau / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

What has Saudi Arabia done to hit back?

The Saudi-led coalition says it has struck back hard. Its spokesman, Colonel Turki al-Maliki, said attacks on civilians would be met with "resolve." On Friday, the coalition said it had destroyed three rocket launch platforms the Houthis used.

Airstrikes were reported over Sanaa on Friday night, and loud blasts were heard in Aden. Yemeni government forces are pushing back against the Houthis on the ground too. AP says Thursday's strike was the deadliest in Saudi Arabia since Saudi and allied forces started a major offensive in Yemen the weekend before.

Help has also arrived from abroad. Pakistan and Turkey agreed to send troops under a defence pact they signed with Saudi Arabia earlier this year. Pakistan's foreign ministry said it has "a substantial number of forces" in Riyadh. They are there to defend Saudi land, it said, and will not cross the border to attack the Houthis.

On Friday, Saudi Arabia and Yemen's government asked the UN Security Council to act. Yemen's envoy said the Houthi threat "is no longer an internal Yemeni affair."

Why are people so angry about the people in white?

Look at what people wrote under the clip and one feeling stands out. The Houthis say they fight Israel and America. Yet this missile, people said, landed among Muslim travellers, some of them on their way to Mecca.

One person said they had walked through that same hall many times. Another shared footage of passengers getting ready to board shortly before. Some called for Saudi Arabia to flatten Sanaa. For more on how this war keeps spreading, see our coverage of Israelis who lived through 7 October going to the polls.

The one sky the Houthis promised not to touch

Go back to that exception. The Houthis told the world that every plane over Saudi Arabia is fair game, except over Mecca and Medina.

They drew a line around the holy cities to show they respect them. Then the camera in Riyadh caught a hall of people dressed for Mecca, running through pink smoke.

Mecca's sky stayed off limits. The hall full of people on their way there did not.