Saudi Arabia said on Wednesday that an attack on an Aramco building in the kingdom's east sparked a "limited fire," as US President Donald Trump slammed Yemen's Houthis for "behaving very badly."

ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT

A Saudi energy ministry official said an administrative building belonging to oil giant Aramco in Dhahran was struck on Tuesday evening, resulting in a "limited fire" but "no casualties or fatalities".

Saudi's civil defence agency separately said on Wednesday that debris from two intercepted Houthi missiles wounded four people in the capital Riyadh, and that 15 homes were damaged.

Earlier on Tuesday, the coalition struck oil sites across western Yemen, in response to the deadliest attack on the kingdom's soil in years.

The strikes in Yemen's Houthi-held capital Sana'a and the western provinces of Dhamar and Saada targeted facilities used to "supply the war effort" by the Houthis to "threaten the kingdom, Yemen, the southern Red Sea and waterways", coalition spokesman Turki al-Maliki wrote on X.

A powerful explosion then rang out in the Saudi capital, with a phone alert sent to residents saying "the city of Riyadh is facing a hostile aerial threat".

While walking down a major avenue in Riyadh, a witness said he "saw a projectile cutting across the sky" above a mall, leaving "a yellowish trail of light followed by a trail of smoke. Then, we heard an explosion".

"People were calm, no one was speaking. We were scared and all looking up at the sky," he added, requesting anonymity.

Witnesses reported further explosions in Riyadh on Wednesday.

After Houthi strikes on Saudi airports and energy sites in recent days, the Saudi-led coalition issued its first evacuation order in the Yemeni capital since the war flared in July, before attacking the Yemen Petroleum Company facility on Sana'a's outskirts.

A breaking news alert on the Houthi-affiliated Al-Masirah TV channel said "Saudi aggression" targeted the oil firm.

The Houthis had earlier issued a new threat to target Riyadh's international airport, a refinery, and an Aramco facility in Dammam if the strike went ahead, calling for citizens to avoid them.

Many countries have issued travel warnings to their citizens in Saudi Arabia, most recently France, which told its citizens to avoid Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam airports.

'Behaving very badly'

A strike on Riyadh's international airport on Saturday left 13 people dead and operations suspended in the worst attack since 2015.

The airport attack prompted US President Donald Trump to say he was considering joining Saudi strikes against the Houthis.

He wrote on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday that "the Houthis are behaving very badly", accusing them of acting "probably at the behest of Iran".

"I thought they learned their lesson a year ago when we bombed the hell out of them," Trump added, laying the blame for their actions on Tehran.

"They’ve been silent for a long time, but now they’ve emerged again, probably at the behest of Iran, which is a failing nation, with no navy, no airforce, the world’s worst economy, and 301% Inflation, in a very nasty way, hitting Saudi Arabia, and purposefully trying to drive up Oil Prices, probably prior to the US elections — not nice."

The Houthis warned the US against intervention, with political bureau member Mohammed Al Bukhaiti stating they would target American interests in the region.

Bukhaiti said the purpose of the campaign against Saudi targets was to send a message to the crown prince "that he can no longer wage aggression against Yemen from a safe position".

The Saudi cabinet led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman vowed earlier Tuesday that it "will not allow its security or freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb Strait to be threatened".

The Saudi-led coalition has supported Yemen's internationally recognised government militarily against the Houthis since 2015 in a long-running civil war that has created a dire humanitarian crisis.

In Yemen, the renewed fighting was fuelling the risk of infectious disease outbreaks.

Suspected cholera cases tripled there in three weeks, the World Health Organization said Tuesday, warning that the growing disease burden was straining hospitals already treating war casualties.