One of the runways at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh had been closed down for six hours overnight on Wednesday, following an aviation notice, amid unconfirmed explosions in the vicinity of the Saudi capital.
As per an aviation notice, runway 15L/33R at the airport, which has an aviation code of OERK, was to be kept closed from 9:00 pm UTC on July 29 to 3:00 am UTC on July 30.
There was no reason mentioned in the notice for the closure, nor have the Saudi authorities made any link between the explosions reported in the area and the runway closure.
The precise source of any blasts near Riyadh remained unverified, with no confirmation attributing them to Iran, Iraqi militias or Yemen’s Houthi movement.
The closure came against the backdrop of the kingdom’s most turbulent security stretch in months. Two days earlier, Saudi Arabia’s defense ministry said it had intercepted and destroyed several drones targeting oil facilities in Riyadh and the Eastern Province, blaming Iran-backed armed groups operating from Iraqi territory. Hours before the runway closure, Saudi and US warplanes struck Iran-aligned militia positions across seven Iraqi provinces, marking the first time Riyadh had publicly claimed a strike inside Iraq since the outbreak of the wider US-Iran war earlier this year. Iran, in turn, fired missiles at a US base in Jordan on the same day.
King Khalid International, Riyadh’s main gateway for domestic and international traffic, has continued operating throughout the conflict even as neighboring airports have faced disruption; four civilian airports in the kingdom’s south were closed for days earlier in July after a Houthi missile and drone barrage. Even brief runway suspensions at a hub as busy as King Khalid can trigger delays, diversions and aircraft holding patterns while authorities assess whether it is safe to resume normal operations.
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