Kuwait International Airport was hit in the early hours of Wednesday by a barrage of Iranian missiles and drones that injured an unspecified number of people and heavily damaged the main passenger terminal, plunging a key civilian aviation hub back into chaos just days after it had resumed full operations. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation said in a statement on X that the airport had activated its emergency plan and suspended all flights indefinitely after Terminal 1 was “targeted by Iranian aggression, resulting in significant damage to several airport facilities, in addition to recording human injuries.”
DGCA spokesman Abdullah Al-Rajhi said authorities had decided to divert all air traffic to alternative airports until further notice, adding that inspection and comprehensive assessment by technical and specialized teams was already underway. The closure comes just two days after the airport fully reopened for the first time in months; it had been operating only intermittently since the U.S.-Iran war began on Feb. 28.
The strike on the civilian airport unfolded as a broader wave of Iranian attacks swept the Persian Gulf region, following hours of tit-for-tat exchanges Tuesday. U.S. Central Command said a series of Iranian missiles and drones directed at regional neighbors either failed to reach their targets or were repelled by U.S. forces. Two Iranian missiles fired at Kuwait “fell short or broke apart en route,” CENTCOM said, and three others launched at Bahrain were intercepted by U.S. and Bahraini air defense forces. An additional wave of Iranian drones targeting U.S. forces in Kuwait was shot down, CENTCOM reported, with no American personnel or assets harmed.
“The IRGC claimed they struck U.S. 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain and a U.S. air base in the region with missiles and drones,” CENTCOM said in a statement. “No U.S. personnel were harmed. CENTCOM forces remain vigilant and ready to defend against unwarranted Iranian aggression during the ongoing cease-fire.”
The American military also downed three attack drones launched by Iran toward civilian mariners that CENTCOM said were sailing legitimately in regional waters, and struck an Iranian military ground control station on Qeshm Island. In a separate operation, CENTCOM released footage of a U.S. warplane firing a Hellcat missile into the engine room of an empty Iran-bound oil tanker, the Botswana-flagged M/T Lexie, in the Strait of Hormuz. CENTCOM said the tanker had ignored repeated warnings over a 24-hour period as it transited international waters toward Iran’s Kharg Island, and that disabling the vessel was part of enforcing U.S. blockade measures.