On Thursday, the Saudi-led military coalition announced the interception of a cruise missile in the Medina region, while the Ansar Allah “Houthi” group denied this news.
The military spokesman for the Houthi Ansar Allah movement, Yahya Saree, said that any targeting operation would be carried out towards Saudi territory, and he said that what “Saudi Arabia claims” of targeting towards Medina is “a great and great slander,” as he put it.
The spokesman for the military coalition led by the Kingdom, Turki Al-Maliki, said in a post on the X platform that the Kingdom “intercepted and destroyed a winged (cruise) missile in the Medina region.”
The coalition announced, at dawn on Thursday, the interception and destruction of a drone in the eastern region.
On the other hand, Houthi media reported attacks on Sanaa that they said were Saudi.
The military spokesman for the Ansar Allah Houthi movement, Yahya Saree, said that King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh was targeted by a ballistic missile, adding that the missile hit its target “accurately,” as he put it.
Saree also announced, after midnight on Thursday/Friday, that a Saudi Typhoon warplane had been targeted in the airspace of Saada Governorate with a surface-to-air missile, saying that it had been “directly hit and is at risk of falling,” as he put it.
The United Nations calls on the Houthis to release their detainees
For its part, the United Nations welcomed, on Thursday, the release of an employee who had been detained by the Houthis in Yemen since 2024.
UN Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq said that Sami Al-Kalabi has now returned to his home and his family.
At the daily press conference, he added, "This is a positive step in the right direction, and we hope that he will be able to receive the specialized medical care he urgently needs."
The United Nations renewed its call on the Houthis to immediately and unconditionally release all remaining detainees from United Nations employees, international and national non-governmental organizations, civil society and diplomatic missions.
To date, 71 UN employees are still detained by the Ansar Allah Houthi group.
The International Monetary Fund expects a contraction in the Saudi economy
With the increasing escalation taking place in the region, the International Monetary Fund expected that the Saudi economy would contract by 3.3% in 2026, in a rare recession that the Kingdom is witnessing.
In its latest report on global economic prospects, the Fund expected a contraction in the economies of the Gulf countries as the war continues to cause disruptions in fuel exports, ruling out that the situation will quickly return to what it was before the war, even if the confrontations stop.
International Monetary Fund Director General Kristalina Georgieva warned Wednesday that the recent attacks on Saudi Arabia could affect everyone “everywhere.”
Despite this, the Fund expected that the economies of the Gulf states in general would recover from the consequences of the war, although this was unlikely to happen “in the medium term.”
Jihad Azour, director of the Fund's Middle East and Central Asia Department, said, "We will not return to the pre-war situation in the medium term. This shock will leave its mark in various sectors and lead to the disruption of a number of infrastructures, and it requires additional spending in order to enhance resilience."
Since the outbreak of the US-Israeli war on Iran, Tehran has almost completely restricted navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, and in July the truce that has been in effect in Yemen since 2022 collapsed.
