THE United States Embassy in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh, was hit by two drones and a “limited explosion” broke out at the diplomatic compound, the Saudi Ministry of Defence has said.
According to multiple international media outlets, News Point Nigeria reports that the strike on the US Embassy early on Tuesday also caused “minor material damage” to the compound, the Defence Ministry said in a statement, while there were reports later that more drones were targeting the site amid Iran’s retaliation across the Gulf to US-Israeli attacks.
US President Donald Trump told the NewsNation media outlet that the US response to the embassy attack and the killing of four American service members would soon be made clear. “You’ll find out soon,” he said.
Black smoke was seen rising over Riyadh’s Diplomatic Quarter, which houses foreign missions, after the attack, the Reuters news agency reports.
Three people told Reuters that a loud blast was heard and flames were seen at the embassy, though the Saudi Defence Ministry and one of the sources told the news agency that the fire in the aftermath of the drone attack was small in scale.
The embassy building was empty at the time of the attack, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters, and there were no reports of casualties.
A source close to the Saudi military, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the AFP news agency that air defences had intercepted four drones targeting Riyadh’s diplomatic quarter in the attack.
Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from Washington, DC, said the US president’s behaviour providing only snippets of commentary to individual news organisations, as in the case of the embassy attack was “unprecedented” at a time when the country was engaged in a major conflict.
“Since this conflict began, he’s been phoning up individual reporters, dropping little nuggets of information,” Hanna said, adding that the US public has received very little information from the president about the conflict.
“This is utterly unprecedented in terms of how a president conducts himself in a time of conflict, and that is a question that the American public – a large degree of the American public – are going to be pondering on in the days and weeks and, indeed, months ahead,” he said.
Earlier on Tuesday, the US Embassy issued a “shelter in place” notice to US citizens in the Saudi Arabian cities of Riyadh, Jeddah and Dhahran amid the attacks.
“We recommend American citizens in the Kingdom to shelter in place immediately and avoid the Embassy until further notice due to an attack on the facility. The US Mission to Saudi Arabia continues to monitor the regional situation,” the embassy said.
