Saudi air defences intercepted and destroyed three cruise missiles launched toward the Riyadh region on Wednesday, November 11, the Saudi-led military coalition fighting Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi movement said, according to Reuters. Coalition spokesperson Major General Turki al-Maliki confirmed the interceptions, the Saudi Press Agency reported, in a statement also carried by Qatar News Agency.

Source: Reuters via The Business Standard

In a fuller account of Wednesday's launches, the coalition said it had also intercepted and destroyed two drones launched toward Makkah and the southern regions of the kingdom, Reuters reported via Devdiscourse. The three missiles aimed at Riyadh were all cruise missiles — a salvo made up entirely of cruise missiles, after the mixed ballistic and cruise salvos of recent days.

Wednesday's interceptions were the second consecutive day of Houthi fire toward the Saudi capital. On Tuesday, November 10, Saudi air defences intercepted a ballistic missile and a cruise missile launched toward Riyadh, the coalition said, on a night when it also reported a missile toward the kingdom's south and a drone over the oil-rich Eastern Province, while the Houthi-run Saba news agency reported Saudi airstrikes on Sanaa.

Source: Reuters via Devdiscourse

The new salvo follows Tuesday's interceptions and the reported strikes on Sanaa. Read the earlier story: Saudi intercepts missiles and drone as Sanaa strikes reported

Second day in a row over the capital

There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage from Wednesday's interceptions in the reports reviewed, and the Houthis did not immediately comment. The coalition did not say in its Wednesday statement which specific sites in the Riyadh region the missiles had been aimed at, and there was no independent confirmation of a specific target.

The exchange is part of an escalation that has built since September, when the Houthis advanced toward the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the strategic shipping chokepoint at the southern entrance to the Red Sea, Reuters has reported. Since then the group has stepped up strikes on Saudi airports, ports and oil facilities, while Saudi Arabia has carried out airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. Last month, Reuters reported, a Houthi attack on Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport killed 13 people and wounded more than 300, and on Sunday falling shrapnel from an attempted attack damaged a Saudi Aramco administrative building in Riyadh, according to Saudi Arabia's Energy Ministry, with no casualties reported in that incident.

For the lakhs of Indian and Punjabi workers who live and work across Saudi Arabia — including in Riyadh and the Eastern Province — each new round of missile fire toward the capital and the oil region is watched closely, because the same airports, highways and industrial areas under threat are the ones Gulf workers use every day. No Indian casualties were reported in Wednesday's interceptions in the reports reviewed.

What happens next depends on whether the daily pattern continues. The coalition has answered earlier salvos with airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, including in Sanaa on Tuesday according to the Houthi-run Saba agency, and another night of launches toward Riyadh would keep the Bab el-Mandeb and Red Sea shipping risk — and the risk to Gulf cities — at the centre of the region's security picture.