Lufthansa, Air India suspend flights to Riyadh after Houthi attacks

Oct 8 (Reuters) - Lufthansa Group airlines and Air India will suspend flights to Riyadh, they said on Thursday, as Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis renewed threats against airlines after claiming an attack on the Saudi capital's airport.

A Lufthansa spokesperson told Reuters the German group's airlines would suspend flights to Riyadh through October 16 due to "current developments in the Middle East". Air India said it had cancelled all flights to the Saudi capital until October 10.

Smoke was seen rising from a stationary aircraft at Riyadh airport earlier on Thursday, according to a witness and three people briefed on the matter.

The Houthis said they had struck King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh with a ballistic missile.

Several dozen international flights bound for Riyadh on Thursday evening have been cancelled, data from global flight tracker FlightRadar24 showed.

According to data compiled by aviation analytics company Cirium, 49.7% of departures from Riyadh airport had been cancelled by 1500 GMT, with 31 more cancellations expected for Friday in all Saudi airports.

(Reporting by Joanna Plucinska, Gianluca Lo Nostro and Vallari Srivastava. Editing by Jan Harvey and Mark Potter)