US Embassy in Saudi Arabia struck by suspected Iranian drone attack

The fire was "limited," the ministry said, and resulted in minor damage to the building.

According to a Reuters report, a loud blast was heard before the fire broke out, and smoke was seen rising over Riyadh's Diplomatic Quarter, which houses foreign missions.

Following the strike, the US Embassy issued a shelter-in-place notice for the cities of Riyadh, Jeddah, and Dharan and stated that embassy staff was limiting all non-essential travel to military installations in the region.

The Embassy additionally recommended that all US citizens in Saudi Arabia shelter in place immediately, avoid the Embassy until further notice, avoid demonstrations and large gatherings, and avoid areas where there is a heavy police presence.

According to a Reuters report, a loud blast was heard before the fire broke out, and smoke was seen rising over Riyadh's Diplomatic Quarter, which houses foreign missions.

The US Embassy in Kuwait was closed until further notice, the embassy announced on X/Twitter on Tuesday morning.

This included canceling all regular and emergency consular appointments due to "ongoing regional tensions."

Planned Israeli action against Iran that would have seen retaliation against American forces prompted the United States to launch its weekend strikes against Tehran, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday.

"We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties," Rubio told reporters.

On Saturday, Defense Minister Israel Katz described Israel's attack against Iran as pre-emptive.

Iran has said the US assault was unprovoked, occurring as Tehran and Washington were in negotiations on a nuclear accord.

Trump has said the US faced an imminent threat from Iran that justified war, although he gave no specifics, and some US lawmakers said he has shown no evidence to back that assessment.

Since the US and Israel began striking the Iranian regime on Saturday, Iran has retaliated by attempting to attack a number of US assets in the region.

Qatar additionally intercepted Iranian attempts to attack civilian infrastructure, including the international airport, a Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson told CNN on Monday.

In Bahrain, which also has a US military base, a vessel docked in the Port of Bahrain was struck by two unknown projectiles, according to a United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) report on Monday. The projectiles started a fire, which was extinguished as the ship's crew was evacuated.

A ship docked in Salman Industrial City in Bahrain also caught fire on Monday after debris from a missile interception fell on it. One person was killed, and two were seriously injured during the incident before the fire was brought under control, according to Bahrain’s Ministry of Interior.