The Saudi -led coalition fighting the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen said Thursday it has thwarted a missile attack on Saudi Arabia’s holy city of Medina as well as another attack in the eastern part of the kingdom.
Meanwhile, a former chief of Israel’s domestic security service has filed a defamation suit against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and hospital officials in Gaza said an Israeli strike there killed one man.
Here is the latest news from the Middle East on Thursday. Read our full coverage here.
The Saudi-led coalition said in a statement that it intercepted and destroyed a cruise missile over the province of Medina, but notably did not assign blame for the attack.
The Houthis’ military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree denied carrying out the attack. The rebel group previously pledged not to attack airports in the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.
The international airport in the capital, Riyadh, has suspended service because of Houthi attacks.
Earlier Thursday, Saudi Arabia also said it destroyed a drone over the country’s Eastern province, a major oil-producing region.
The latest conflict 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, backing forces aligned with Yemen’s internationally recognized government, has been trying to retake those areas.
A former chief of Israel’s domestic security service filed a defamation suit against Netanyahu, saying the prime minister had falsely accused him of withholding warnings about Hamas threats in the hours before the Oct. 7, 2023 attack.
Ronen Bar, former head of the agency commonly known as Shin Bet, demanded 3 million shekels ($965,000) in the suit filed Wednesday.
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 didn’t 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 describes 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.
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.
An Israeli strike north of Gaza City killed one man on Thursday morning, according to officials at Shifa Hospital.
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. Its figures are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. It doesn’t give a breakdown of civilians and militants.
A Syrian court on Thursday sentenced two people to death and three others to prison terms over their roles in last year’s sectarian violence in the country’s coastal region.
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. Two members of the security forces received prison terms.
The European Union and Gulf Cooperation Council members announced they are putting on hold their planned Oct. 24 summit in Riyadh.
No new date has been 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.
The secretary-general of the GCC, Jasem Albudaiwi, 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 EU-GCC summit was 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.
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This report will be updated throughout the day as new developments emerge.
