The US State Department has ordered some diplomats and the families of US government employees to leave Saudi Arabia as the kingdom faces a barrage of near-daily attacks from the Iranian-supported Houthi movement in Yemen.
State department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said: "The safety and security of department personnel and their families remain our highest priority." The order covers the embassy in Riyadh and its satellite consulates. The embassy was badly damaged at the start of the US war on Iran and had been operating with a skeleton staff for months, although some diplomats had returned in recent weeks.
Pigott said reports that families were also being withdrawn from the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Qatar and Bahrain were "inaccurate" and that the order applied to Saudi Arabia only. However, NBC and AFP carried such reports, and the New York Times reported that the Trump administration was developing plans to restart the war on Iran.
On Wednesday evening, Saudi aviation authorities said one Saudi resident was killed and eight people injured in an attack on King Fahad International Airport in Dammam, which also suffered material damage. Flight-tracking service Flightradar24 said flights had been diverted away from the airport. Separately, the Saudi energy ministry said falling debris from the interception of a drone targeting an oil facility in the country's south-east killed two people and injured two more. Neither attack was immediately claimed by the Houthis, but airports and oil facilities have been major targets in the group's recent wave of strikes.
The US previously ordered non-essential staff to leave the Gulf ahead of its war against Iran in late February. NBC reported that the US military has been quietly scaling back its presence at bases across the Middle East in recent days; a US Central Command spokesperson said service members are regularly moved to "optimize mission readiness."
The withdrawals come amid reports that Trump has been presented with plans for restarting strikes on Iran after the midterm elections. The New York Times reported that the US and Israel developed plans for a "short but intensive operation" after defence secretary Peter Hegseth travelled to Israel earlier this week for meetings with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Last week Trump said the US was looking to knock out Iran's Pickaxe Mountain, a site linked to the country's nuclear program, but he has publicly said he does not intend to restart the war before the 3 November elections. Aid workers have warned that a besieged Yemeni city is on the verge of an "unmanageable" crisis.