Riyadh airport came under fresh attack on Sunday, the Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen’s Houthis said, a day after a strike blamed on the group killed 12 people.

Coalition spokesman Major General Turki al-Maliki said an unidentified projectile struck Terminal 4 at King Khalid International Airport, causing a fire, and that the relevant authorities were responding at the scene.

He added in a post on X that air defences had “intercepted and destroyed” a cruise missile near the airport.

Earlier, AFP journalists heard a powerful explosion in central Riyadh, while three residents in the city’s north later reported hearing another blast.

“The birds went into a frenzy after the sound. The whole house shook,” a resident of the Al-Aarid neighbourhood in northern Riyadh told AFP.

Residents also said they saw ambulances heading towards the airport, which lies in the northeast of the capital.

A Riyadh Metro official told AFP that the capital’s authorities had suspended transit service to two of the three stations serving the airport. The official said the decision would be “reviewed on a daily basis”.

Saturday’s attack on Riyadh airport was a sharp escalation in the Yemen war, where Saudi Arabia backs the internationally recognised government against the Houthis, who captured swathes of Red Sea coastline in a lightning offensive last month.