Houthis Set Fire to Aramco’s Dhahran Headquarters

A Houthi missile attack on Tuesday set a limited fire in an Aramco office building in Dhahran, the Energy Ministry said, with no deaths at the site. Debris from two cruise missiles shot down over Riyadh wounded four people and damaged 15 homes. The blast landed on the campus that runs the world’s largest oil company, hours after the Houthis named that headquarters as a target.

A Limited Fire at the Building That Runs Aramco

The strike hit on Tuesday evening, October 13. An official source at the Ministry of Energy said an Aramco administrative building in Dhahran, in the Eastern Province, was targeted and that the blaze stayed limited. Competent crews responded, and the ministry reported limited fire and no injuries there.

A company source described a ballistic missile hitting the headquarters complex and damaging the top three floors of an office tower. Other people familiar with the site said the building was on fire. The fire was later put out. Aramco itself did not issue a public comment. Staff were told to work from home on Wednesday.

The Dhahran campus sits on the Gulf coast at the center of the kingdom’s oil belt. It holds a major operations center for wells, pipelines, refineries and export terminals, along with a petroleum university and a large air base. Six people said they heard loud booms near the complex. Four of them said an evacuation order went out for the building.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen said it had shot down a ballistic missile headed for Dhahran and that fragments fell in a residential area. That account sits beside the ministry’s finding that the office was targeted and caught fire. Both can be true at once: a missile can be engaged and still put flame into a building, or falling wreckage can do the same job.

WHAT WAS SHOT DOWN ON TUESDAY

• Dhahran: One ballistic missile toward the city where Aramco is based, with fragments in a residential area.
• Haradh: A second ballistic missile toward the Haradh center in Al-Ahsa.
• North of Riyadh: Three drones destroyed north of the capital.
• Over the capital: Two Houthi cruise missiles destroyed, with debris wounding four people.

Civil defence said the four wounded in Riyadh were two women, a man and a child. Phone alerts told residents the capital faced a hostile aerial threat. A witness on a main avenue said he “saw a projectile cutting across the sky” above a mall, with “a yellowish trail of light followed by a trail of smoke. Then, we heard an explosion.” People went quiet and looked up, he said.

The Houthis Named the Headquarters Hours Earlier

The office fire did not come out of a clear sky. On Tuesday the coalition told civilians to leave the Yemen Petroleum Company’s Al-Sabaha Central Station on the western edge of Sanaa, ahead of what it called a precision operation. It was the first such warning in the Yemeni capital since the war flared again in July.

قيادة القوات المشتركة للتحالف تطلب من المدنيين إخلاء موقع شركة النفط اليمنية / محطة الصباحة المركزية بصنعاء بحسب الخارطة التوضيحية للموقع، وذلك لسلامتهم. pic.twitter.com/grg2zVDpS9

— المتحدث الرسمي باسم قوات التحالف (@CJFCSpox) October 13, 2026

Maj. Gen. Turki al-Maliki, the coalition spokesman, posted a map with the order. The Houthis answered by telling workers and residents to get away from Aramco sites, which they called a legitimate target. Military spokesman Yahya Saree said a strike on Sanaa would bring a tough and painful reply in Riyadh. He listed King Khalid International Airport, an Aramco refinery in the capital, and an Aramco headquarters in Dammam, the city next to Dhahran.

THE TARGETS SAREE NAMED

• The headquarters: Aramco’s main office, which he placed in Dammam; the company is based in Dhahran.
• The airport: King Khalid International Airport, already hit four times in the surrounding days.
• The refinery: An Aramco refinery in Riyadh.

The coalition then said it struck oil sites in Sanaa, Dhamar and Saada that were used to supply the Houthi war effort and to threaten the kingdom, Yemen and the southern Red Sea. Al-Masirah television, aligned with the Houthis, said the oil firm at Al-Sabaha had been hit. In Sanaa, civilians queued at fuel stations after the warning, fearing shortages.

Saudi Arabia’s cabinet, chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, said earlier on Tuesday that the kingdom “will not allow its security or freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait to be threatened.” The Houthis have spent a week firing missiles and drones at Saudi airports and energy sites after Riyadh backed a new government offensive in Yemen.

Why This Strike Is Not Another Abqaiq

The last time a projectile made Aramco a global story, the target was steel that moves crude. On September 14, 2019, attacks on the Abqaiq processing plant and the Khurais field forced a halt of 5.7 million barrels a day. That was more than half of Saudi output and about 5 percent of global supply. Amin Nasser, Aramco’s president and chief executive, said then there were no injuries and that crews had the fires under control. Output was back to 9.9 million barrels a day within about a month.

Tuesday’s fire was in an office. The ministry described an administrative building, not a stabilization tower or a spheroid. It did not report a cut in crude. The difference is the point the Houthis appear to be testing: a company can patch a plant with steel and stored barrels. It cannot as easily tell thousands of clerks, engineers and visiting buyers that the headquarters is a safe place to sit.

ABQAIQ IN 2019 AND DHAHRAN ON OCTOBER 13

Other energy kit in the kingdom is already bruised. A refinery at Jazan in the west has been shut since an earlier strike, and a Red Sea export port has been targeted. The east-west pipeline that moves crude away from the Strait of Hormuz was shut for a time in September after an attack launched from Iraq. Cheap missiles against an office tower add a different bill: insurance, travel, and whether the people who run the system will keep coming in.

Riyadh Airport Already Took the Heavier Blow

If Dhahran was the symbol, King Khalid International Airport was the body count. Saturday’s strike killed 13 people and wounded 309, the deadliest blow inside the kingdom in a decade. The dead included four Saudis, two Bangladeshis, and one person each from the United States, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, Sudan, Egypt and India. An Indian man died of his wounds after civil aviation first listed 12 dead. Operations at the airport, which serves a city of about 8 million, were suspended. Schools shifted to remote classes. Traffic in Riyadh thinned as some firms sent staff home.

THE AIRPORT WEEK

1. October 8: Two attacks on King Khalid International Airport kill three Saudi citizens, including Saudia Capt. Hamoud Ali Alkalthami, and damage a parked airliner.
2. October 10: A further strike kills 13 people and wounds 309; the airport shuts and hundreds of flights are cancelled.
3. October 11: Another projectile hits the airport, killing a Pakistani resident and wounding 11; a fire is reported at a terminal.
4. October 13: Missiles and drones are launched at several Saudi cities; an Aramco office in Dhahran burns and four people are hurt by debris in Riyadh.

France told its citizens to avoid the airports in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam. The Houthis have told airlines that Saudi airspace is a theater of operations, with a stated exception over Mecca and Medina. Intercepts over the capital still put metal onto 15 homes. Shooting a missile down is not the same as keeping the ground safe.

The wider war behind that week began as spillover from the fight with Iran. The United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, and Tehran has since choked the Strait of Hormuz. Yemen’s 2022 truce broke down in July. In September the Houthis pushed toward the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the southern gate of the Red Sea, which has become a more vital export path while Hormuz stays closed. A government offensive, backed by Riyadh, later pushed them off the ground nearest the strait, though the group remains close and has gained around Taiz.

Oil Held Near $106 While the Office Burned

Brent crude had already been living on a war premium. It settled at $106.65 a barrel on Monday, October 12, up $1.93, or 1.8 percent, the highest close since September 15. On Tuesday, as booms were heard near Dhahran, December Brent settled at $105.69, down 0.9 percent, while November West Texas Intermediate rose 0.4 percent to $94.14. On Wednesday Brent traded at $106.06 and WTI at $95.38, up $1.24.

Those prints are the market saying the office fire did not take barrels off the water. They are also the market leaving a large fear charge in the price, because the next round could. Nasser has said Saudi Arabia invested heavily in protecting supplies, but that “no nation, even one as capable and confident as ours, can safeguard them alone.” He added: “Markets can diversify suppliers. They cannot diversify geography.”

The International Monetary Fund, in its World Economic Outlook issued in Bangkok, forecast a 3.3 percent contraction in Saudi GDP this year and a rebound of nearly 8 percent in 2027. The fund said the kingdom is less exposed than some Gulf neighbors because it has more than one export route. Those forecasts were built around a long Hormuz closure. They do not appear to include the new Houthi campaign that has now reached the Aramco campus and Riyadh’s main airport.

In Yemen the human cost is moving through clinics as well as front lines. The World Health Organization said Tuesday that suspected cholera cases had tripled in three weeks, piling onto hospitals already treating war wounded.

Washington Says It Will Wait Until After the Vote

President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday that “the Houthis are behaving very badly,” saying they were acting “probably at the behest of Iran.” He has floated joining Saudi strikes and then pulled the timetable past U.S. midterm elections in November. “I’ll be there after the elections, and I will never forget!” he wrote. The United States is not in the Saudi campaign as a combatant. It has been providing intelligence and aerial refueling.

Houthi political bureau member Mohammed Al Bukhaiti told interviewers the group would hit American interests in the region if Washington joined. He also stated, in plain language, what the Dhahran fire is for.

that he can no longer wage aggression against Yemen from a safe position

Mohammed Al Bukhaiti, Houthi political bureau member, to AFP

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, has offered to mediate between Riyadh and the Houthis. Saudi Arabia has been asking allies for more help against missiles and drones and has so far been rebuffed on a direct U.S. combat role. Hard choices over what to cover with scarce interceptors, oil plants, bases, palaces or civilian airports, are already being forced in public.

The office in Dhahran can be repaired. The people who work there were told to stay home on Wednesday. Riyadh’s airport is still absorbing the dead from Saturday. Brent is still near $106. The Houthis have shown they can put fire into the building that runs Aramco without taking 5.7 million barrels a day off the market, and they have said the headquarters remains a legitimate target.