US orders embassy staff, families to leave Saudi Arabia

Daily Mirror and Newswire report that the US State Department ordered some diplomats and family members to leave its missions in Saudi Arabia, while Lankadeepa reports an order for US diplomats and their relatives to depart the country. Newswire says the directive covers non-emergency US government employees and their family members stationed there. Newswire and Sri Lanka Mirror attribute the decision to attacks on civilian targets by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement; Newswire attributes that explanation to State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott.

Newswire reports that, after the departure order, Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation authority said a strike at King Fahd International Airport in Dammam killed one person and wounded eight. Newswire also reports that the energy ministry said two people died earlier when Saudi air defences intercepted a drone seeking to hit a site at the Shaybah oil field.

Newswire reports that four US officials told Reuters that relatives at US missions in other Gulf countries would also be told to depart, and says Pigott did not discuss changes to posts outside Saudi Arabia. Sri Lanka Mirror, citing AFP and diplomatic sources, reports instructions affecting relatives of embassy personnel in the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Qatar and Bahrain; it says the State Department had not publicly verified those reports.

Newswire reports that the withdrawals followed an intensification of fighting in Yemen, which it describes as a further front in the regional conflict that began with the US-Israeli war on Iran. It says some US diplomatic personnel had returned to the region in recent months after earlier removals following Iranian attacks on US facilities, after the war began in late February. Newswire says the broader conflict has disrupted global energy trade and harmed Gulf economies. Sri Lanka Mirror reports that the US Embassy in Riyadh had previously been attacked, and Newswire says the embassy issued a security alert on Wednesday.

Written automatically by AI from the outlets’ own reports, and not reviewed by an editor. It can be wrong — the original report is the authority.