Some US diplomats told to leave Saudi Arabia amid Houthi attacks

The US state department has ordered some diplomats and the families of US government employees to leave Saudi Arabia as the gulf kingdom faces a barrage of near-daily attacks, with at least three people killed at an airport and oilfield.

Attacks on “civilian airports and other critical infrastructure” by the Iranian-supported Houthis in Yemen were highlighted as the reason for the drawdown. The state department spokesperson, Tommy Pigott, said: “The safety and security of department personnel and their families remain our highest priority.”

The state department said the order covered its embassy in Riyadh and its satellite consulates. The embassy had been badly damaged at the start of the US war on Iran and had been operating with only a skeleton staff for months, although in recent weeks some diplomats had returned.

Media outlets – including NBC and AFP – reported that families of US embassy personnel were also being withdrawn from the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Qatar and Bahrain, while the New York Times said the Trump administration was developing plans to restart the war on Iran.

However, in his statement on Wednesday, Pigott described the reports of further withdrawals as “inaccurate” and said the state department order was for the departure of staff and their families from Saudi Arabia only.

Saudi Arabia has faced a succession of deadly attacks from the Houthis over recent weeks, including a strike on Riyadh’s international airport which was the kingdom’s deadliest in years as the war with the group escalates.

On Thursday the Saudi Civil Aviation Authority announced that two people had been killed in overnight attacks on King Fahd international airport in Dammam on the Gulf near Bahrain and Qatar.

Eight people were injured and there was material damage to the airport, according to officials. The global flight-tracking service Flightradar24 said flights had been diverted away from the airport.

Separately, falling debris from the successful interception of a drone targeting an oil facility in the country’s south-east killed two people and injured a further two, the Saudi energy ministry said.

The Houthis said on Thursday ⁠they ⁠had ​launched attacks on ⁠Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry in ⁠Riyadh, Saudi ​Aramco ‌facilities ‌in Yanbu ‌and King Fahd international airport in Dammam.

Essential workers at Saudi Aramco’s headquarters in the east of the country were told to evacuate on Thursday, two sources told Agence France-Presse, after their non-essential colleagues were told to work from home since last week.

The US previously ordered non-essential staff to leave the Gulf in late February before the start of its war against Iran. NBC reported that the US military had been quietly scaling back its presence at bases across the Middle East in recent days, but a spokesperson from US central command told the US news outlet that service members were regularly moved to “optimize mission readiness”.

The withdrawal of staff from the region coincides with reports that Trump has been presented with plans for restarting strikes on Iran after the midterm elections.

The New York Times reported that the US and Israel had developed plans for a “short but intensive operation” after the defense secretary, Peter Hegseth, travelled to Israel earlier this week for meetings with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Last week ⁠Trump said the US was hoping to knock out Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain, a site linked to the country’s ⁠nuclear program, however the US president has publicly said he does not intend to restart the war before the 3 November elections.

With Reuters and Agence France-Presse