US State Department orders some staff to leave Saudi Arabia as attacks escalate

The US State Department has instructed certain diplomats and their families to depart from Saudi Arabia as the intensity of attacks increases. In the span of a few days, three individuals have lost their lives in separate incidents across the nation. Saudi officials reported that debris from a drone that intercepted during an attempted assault on an oil facility resulted in two fatalities, while another person succumbed to injuries sustained in an attack at the King Fahd International Airport in Dammam.

Tensions between Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis and Saudi Arabia have intensified over the past month. In response to Saudi strikes, the Houthis have retaliated by targeting airports, energy installations, and military bases within Saudi Arabia using missiles and drones. A particularly devastating strike on Riyadh's international airport marked the deadliest attack on the kingdom's airports in recent years.

According to a spokesperson for the US Department of State, "Non-emergency US government employees and their family members have been ordered to depart Saudi Arabia." The spokesperson further warned, "These hostilities have the potential to escalate rapidly." In the latest assault on the King Fahd International Airport, eight individuals sustained injuries ranging from minor to severe.

The specifics of the attack remain undisclosed, but the strike follows a series of previous assaults on Saudi Arabian airports by Houthi forces. The energy ministry has not disclosed the identity of the entity responsible for the drone attack targeting the Shaybah oil field near the border with the United Arab Emirates, which resulted in two injuries.

Yemen has been engulfed in a civil war since 2014, when the Houthis ousted the government from Sanaa. The conflict escalated in 2015 following a Saudi-led military coalition's intervention to reinstall the government's authority. A temporary ceasefire has been in effect for the past four years, but it fractured in July after the Houthis declared a "maritime embargo" against Saudi Arabia and commenced missile and drone assaults on Saudi airports, energy facilities, and tankers in the Red Sea.

The Houthis claimed retaliation for what they deemed a Saudi blockade of their territory, as well as an airstrike on Sanaa airport that they attributed to the kingdom. The group's "maritime embargo" in the Bab al-Mandab Strait along Yemen's southwestern coast has contributed to a surge in global oil prices, as Saudi Arabia had been relying on the Red Sea for oil exports following the US and Israel's war with Iran, which effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf.