Houthis deny Saudi accusations of targeting Medina’s holy sites

The Saudi-led coalition accused Yemen’s Houthi rebels of attacking a power plant in the holy city of Medina in Saudi Arabia, a claim the Iran-backed group denied.

The alleged attack came as fighting intensified in Yemen, where forces of the internationally recognized government said they carried out strikes on Houthi targets and witnesses heard explosions in the Houthi-held capital, Sana’a.

The Saudi-led coalition said on Thursday that a drone struck the Taibah power distribution station in Medina, which supplies electricity to the Prophet’s Mosque.

Medina, the burial place of the Prophet Muhammad and home to the Prophet’s Mosque, is one of Islam’s holiest cities, along with Mecca.

Coalition spokesman Major General Turki al-Maliki said a drone struck the Taibah power distribution station at 5:11 a.m. local time.

“The investigation and the evidence gathered by the competent authorities have confirmed the involvement of the Houthi terrorist militia in planning and carrying out this cowardly terrorist act, based on the post-action review and the wreckage of the drone used,” he said in a statement.

The coalition said a transformer was knocked out of service without affecting the wider power grid. Al-Maliki said the facility supplied electricity to the Prophet’s Mosque.

“This cowardly terrorist act, which targeted a civilian structure that supplied electricity to the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, is a continuation of this extremist militia’s efforts to target the Two Holy Mosques,” he said.

On Thursday, a senior Houthi rebel official again rejected accusations that the movement had targeted Islamic holy sites, declaring them a “lie” intended to further support earlier claims, according to the Houthi-run Saba news agency.

The group had firmly rejected Riyadh’s accusations in mid-September of a drone attack on Mecca, Islam’s holiest site.

Mecca is Islam’s holiest site, home to the Kaaba, toward which Muslims around the world turn in prayer, and the destination of the Hajj pilgrimage, one of the Five Pillars, or main principles, of the faith.

The accusation came as fighting intensified in Yemen, after the internationally recognized government’s army said it had carried out strikes on Houthi rebel targets in Sana’a, Saada and Taiz.

A spokesman said the army had carried out a “high-value target operation” in Sana’a and had struck 11 targets in Saada.

He added that 27 airstrikes had targeted an “integrated military system” belonging to the Houthi rebels in Taiz.

The Houthis, who control Sana’a and much of Yemen’s Red Sea coast, have repeatedly launched drones and missiles toward Saudi Arabia since the kingdom intervened in Yemen’s civil war in 2015.

Any confirmed attack on Mecca or Medina would make its perpetrators reviled in the eyes of almost the entire Muslim world, Shia and Sunni alike.