Family members of employees at US embassies in the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Qatar and Bahrain have also been ordered to return to the US, according to the source who spoke to AFP.
Tommy Pigott, a spokesman for the US State Department, confirmed in a post on X that most employees in Saudi Arabia had been ordered to leave, but denied that the order also applied to the four other countries.
Amid the reports, Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Energy announced at 9:30 p.m. that two people had been killed and two others injured when air defenses shot down a drone at an oil facility near the border with the United Arab Emirates. It is unclear who was behind the attack.
The attack and the reports about embassy staff come as the Gulf state faces heavy pressure from attacks by the Iran-backed Houthi movement in Yemen. Earlier on Wednesday, Riyadh's airport reopened after having been closed earlier in October following deadly Houthi attacks.
