Saudi coalition says it downs Houthi drone south of Mecca as Red Sea crisis deepens

Saudi Arabia’s air defences intercepted and destroyed a drone south of Mecca on Tuesday evening before it entered restricted airspace over Islam’s holiest city, a spokesman for the Saudi-led military coalition said, in what Riyadh cast as a sharp escalation of Yemen’s renewed war.

Coalition spokesperson Turki al-Maliki said Royal Saudi Air Defence Forces destroyed the aircraft attributed to Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement. He called the security of the two holy mosques and of pilgrims a “red line” and said the coalition would take necessary deterrent measures. Reuters and Al Jazeera reported the account, citing the coalition statement issued early on Wednesday.

Saudi authorities also activated short-lived security alerts in Mecca, Jeddah and Taif on Tuesday — the first such alert for Mecca since what the coalition said was a Houthi ballistic missile attempt in 2017 — before quickly lifting them, according to Al Jazeera and Japan Times reporting.

A Houthi military source, quoted by the Houthi-run SABA news agency, denied any threat to Mecca or other Islamic holy sites. On Wednesday, Houthi politburo member Hazem al-Assad, writing on X and reported by AFP, called Saudi claims of an attack on Mecca a “worn-out lie.” The conflicting accounts have not been independently verified by Watan News.

The Mecca incident comes amid a broader surge in fighting around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a chokepoint linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. Japan Times reported that the Houthis have seized critical stretches of Yemen’s Red Sea coast and declared a maritime blockade aimed at Saudi shipping since July, when Yemen’s long-dormant conflict reignited.

On Tuesday, the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting in New York on the Yemen escalation and threats to navigation, Türkiye Today reported. Saudi representative Abdulaziz M. Alwasil told the Council that Houthi attacks endangered regional security and global supply chains, citing strikes on Saudi cities and continued targeting of commercial vessels. The United States urged Iran to halt support for the Houthis; China called for restraint and a return to talks, according to the same account of the session.

Humanitarian agencies have tracked rising civilian harm. The World Health Organization reported 2,883 casualties since 6 August, and the International Organization for Migration put newly displaced people at about 93,864, Türkiye Today said, citing UN figures. Separate Japan Times reporting put internal displacement near 100,000.

The Saudi-led coalition said missile and drone attacks on urban areas wounded 13 civilians in Khamis Mushait, Abha and Taif, and vowed a “firm” response. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said late Tuesday that Saudi Arabia had launched 52 airstrikes on Yemen over 24 hours and accused Riyadh of hitting civilian sites — claims Riyadh has not confirmed in the same terms.

Diplomatic and energy fallout is widening. In Cairo on Tuesday, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi called for freedom and security of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb, Egypt’s presidency said. Qatar warned that closing Bab el-Mandeb would be “catastrophic for the entire world,” Japan Times reported. Attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure have helped push global crude prices above $100 a barrel, according to the same reporting.

A UN-brokered truce in April 2022 had largely halted cross-border Houthi strikes on Saudi territory. That calm has broken. For Mecca — focal point of the annual Hajj and year-round Umrah pilgrimages — the alerts and interception claim mark the most sensitive security episode involving the holy city in nearly a decade, even as the Houthis insist they do not target sacred sites.

What happens next will turn on whether deterrence, Security Council diplomacy and regional mediation can slow a conflict that now couples Yemen’s civil war with risks to one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

Featured image: The Kaaba, Great Mosque of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Photo by Richard Mortel, 4 December 2020. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. Illustrative; not a depiction of the Tuesday incident.