Saudi air defenses intercept cruise missile over Medina

Saudi Arabia’s air defenses were put to the test again on Thursday, and by the kingdom’s own account they held. The Saudi-led coalition said it intercepted and destroyed a cruise missile over Medina province, thwarting what it described as an attempted missile attack on the holy city, while separately reporting the downing of a drone over the Eastern province, a major oil-producing region. The coalition’s statement stopped short of assigning blame for the Medina attack.

The operational picture around the kingdom’s infrastructure remains strained. Riyadh’s international airport has suspended service because of Houthi attacks, a direct disruption to one of the country’s key transport hubs. The Houthis’ military spokesperson, Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, denied carrying out the Medina strike, and the rebel group has previously pledged not to attack airports in the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

The current round of fighting between the Saudis and the Houthis began last month after the rebels seized key areas along the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a critical waterway for Gulf oil shipments. The Saudi-led coalition, which backs forces aligned with Yemen’s internationally recognized government, has been trying to retake those areas.

Meanwhile, the security situation is reshaping scheduled diplomacy. The European Union and Gulf Cooperation Council members announced they are putting on hold their planned Oct. 24 summit in Riyadh, with no new date set for the gathering that was to bring together leaders from the 27 EU economies and the Gulf states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Jasem Albudaiwi, the GCC’s secretary-general, said in a statement that the delay was made in light of Houthi strikes on Saudi Arabia and a desire “to ensure the safety of participating delegations.” The summit had been scheduled to discuss maritime security in the Red Sea, energy infrastructure investments and stabilizing energy prices in the wake of the Iran war and renewed fighting in Yemen.

Any military assistance flowing to Saudi Arabia under a new defense arrangement will first have to clear a legislative hurdle. Turkey’s Defense Ministry said Thursday that a mutual defense pact between Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, as well as any deployment of Turkish forces under the agreement, requires parliamentary approval. In a statement, the ministry also indicated that no final decision had been made on the type of assistance Turkey might provide to Saudi Arabia. The three countries signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement in August, and Turkish officials say it is expected to be ratified by parliament in the coming days. Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and other officials have ruled out the deployment of combat troops, stressing that the pact is purely defensive.

By contrast, in Israel the fight is playing out in court rather than on the battlefield. Ronen Bar, former head of the domestic security service commonly known as Shin Bet, filed a defamation suit Wednesday demanding 3 million shekels, about $965,000, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Bar says the prime minister falsely accused him of withholding warnings about Hamas threats in the hours before the Oct. 7, 2023 attack.

Netanyahu, in a post last month on X, accused Bar of “failures and crimes” in the hours before the attack, when Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, setting off a massive Israeli bombardment and invasion that has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Netanyahu said Bar knew of the Hamas threat but did not inform him, the military or civilian security units. Bar called the accusations “blood libel,” detailing the steps he took in the hours before the attack to update Netanyahu’s top military advisers and the army, and describing a series of warnings and recommendations his agency delivered in the months before the attack which he says were “consistently disregarded” by the prime minister.

With Israelis preparing to vote in the country’s first general elections since the attack, the suit is the latest in escalating attempts to deflect blame about intelligence failures around Oct. 7. After a string of resignations by top security officials, including Bar, Netanyahu remains the only senior figure from Oct. 7 still in office, making the election in many ways a referendum on his leadership.

On the ground in Gaza, officials at Shifa Hospital said an Israeli strike north of Gaza City killed one man on Thursday morning. Israel’s military said it struck a “terrorist” in the area, without elaborating. The strike came over a year after a ceasefire deal was reached between Israel and the Hamas militant group, a period during which Israel continued to launch deadly strikes on the enclave. More than 1,500 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the ceasefire was reached in October last year, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, whose figures are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. The ministry does not give a breakdown of civilians and militants.

In Syria, a court delivered sentences on Thursday over last year’s sectarian violence in the country’s coastal region. Two people were sentenced to death and three others received prison terms. In March 2025, loyalists of ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad attacked members of the new government’s security forces in areas where a large segment of the country’s Alawite religious minority lives. The government’s counterinsurgency spiraled into widespread violence in which hundreds of civilians, most of them Alawites, were killed. Two members of the pro-Assad groups were sentenced to death and a third to 12 years in prison, while two members of the security forces received prison terms.

This report will be updated throughout the day as new developments emerge.