\n The explosion was followed by a violent tremor that shook Riyadh airport, sending terrified passengers scrambling for safety as panic and chaos swept through the terminals.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I heard a very loud noise, so loud that I felt the airport shake,\" a 32-year-old Riyadh resident told AFP a day after the deadly strike that Saudi Arabia blamed on the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The airport alarm sirens went off, and that's when the panic started.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n People spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity due to the harsh measures Saudi authorities have threatened against those who speak out about strikes.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"People who were in Terminal 3 started running towards us. Some had blood covering their faces,\" recounted the 32-year-old.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Some had lost a hand or an arm. People were running while carrying injured people, covered in blood.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n \"My blood ran cold. I didn't know where to go or what to do.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Security personnel escorted him and other passengers to a lower floor, where they waited for an hour before being allowed to leave the scene.\n<\/p>\n
\n A Saudi military spokesman called the attack a \"full-fledged war crime\".\n<\/p>\n
\n The deadly strike was the second in three days, following waves of Houthi attacks targeting Saudi airports, energy installations and oil tankers after a years-long truce between the two sides collapsed in July.\n<\/p>\n
\n At Riyadh hospitals, the health ministry activated emergency protocols to handle a mass-casualty event, with doctors ordered to report to medical facilities across the capital.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The numbers were far higher than anything I had ever seen here before,\" one doctor in Riyadh told AFP, saying some religious pilgrims bound for Mecca arrived with their white shrouds stained with blood.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Patients had severe limb injuries and shards of glass embedded in their faces and eyes,\" he added.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"At least four people suffered severe nervous breakdowns.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'I want to leave' -\n<\/p>\n
\n Saudi authorities have remained largely silent about the scale and breadth of Houthi attacks during the past three months, leaving some residents worried about what may come next.\n<\/p>\n
\n Warning text messages that once alerted residents to incoming barrages have fallen silent in recent weeks.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I want to leave from here,\" one exasperated Riyadh resident told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I understand they do not want to cause panic but talk to us. Communication channels will make us feel comfortable.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Others have sworn off travelling through the kingdom altogether after getting caught in the crossfire.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I am never flying through Saudi Arabia again,\" said an Indian national whose transit flight to Riyadh was diverted and forced to land in Dammam.\n<\/p>\n
\n There, he and his wife and young child slept in the terminal and said they were given no information by their airline and lost their luggage.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We spent the night at the airport -- on the floor and chairs,\" he added. \"Not just us, there were at least one dozen other people around me from the same flight who kept waiting through the night.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Another traveller was mid-air on a trip to Riyadh when the plane abruptly headed back for Jeddah, triggering dread among some passengers.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We panicked,\" the 39-year-old said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Asked if she would travel again by plane in the kingdom while the war continued to rage, she was unequivocal.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Never. I will never live this horror again.\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The explosion was followed by a violent tremor that shook Riyadh airport, sending terrified passengers scrambling for safety as panic and chaos swept through the terminals. \"I heard a very loud noise, so loud that I felt the airport shake,\" a 32-year-old Riyadh resident told AFP a day after the deadly strike that Saudi Arabia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-167085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n