Saudi Arabia just shot down missiles fired at its own capital

So this isn't a one-off. It's the latest hit in weeks of strikes building on Saudi Arabia.

Just a day ago, Saudi Arabia's East-West oil pipeline got hit in the Medina region. It caused a small fire. Nobody was hurt and the fire went out fast. The pipeline kept running.

And here's why that pipeline matters so much right now. Iran has been restricting the Strait of Hormuz since its war with America and Israel started. So this pipeline is one of the only ways Saudi Arabia can still move oil out without going anywhere near Iran.

Two days ago, the Houthis said they carried out an attack on Riyadh's business district. Saudi officials say falling debris from that attack damaged the Aramco Tower. Nobody was hurt. Prince Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Abdulaziz, the deputy governor of Riyadh, went to inspect the building. He said the attack shows the Houthis are going after civilian sites.

Aramco's Eastern Province headquarters has been hit again and again in recent weeks too.

A day before today's launches, the coalition said it destroyed three Houthi missile-building sites. A parts factory. A chemical plant making propellant. An electronics facility. The coalition says this was a response to repeated Houthi strikes on civilians, and that it's going to keep dismantling the Houthi missile network piece by piece.

Now here's the bigger picture. The Houthis pushed towards the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in September. That's the shipping chokepoint at the bottom of the Red Sea, directly across the Arabian Peninsula from the Strait of Hormuz. Since then, fighting between the Houthis and the Saudi-backed coalition has only gotten worse.

And there's a civilian cost nobody's talking about enough. Riyadh's schools were told to move online again today. Students had only just gone back to classrooms on 8 November, after nearly a month stuck at home. And before that, schools shut once already, back in September.

So that's three times in six weeks that Riyadh's kids haven't been able to go to school.

AFP's own reporting doesn't actually say the school move is a direct response to the attacks. That link is other outlets drawing their own conclusion, not something AFP itself reported.

So here's the real question. Is today just one more strike in the pattern? Or is this the next step up — after a pipeline, an oil company's tower, and now a capital city sending its schoolchildren home for the third time?

The Houthis still haven't said a word. Saudi Arabia says the danger has passed. For now.