UPDATE | Yemen's Armed Forces reject Saudi claims of targeting Mecca, cite 'fabrication born of defeat' Yemen's Armed Forces issued an official statement denying claims by Saudi authorities regarding an intercepted attack targeting the Mecca region. "We confirm that we did not carry out any operation today toward Saudi territory," the Yemeni military command stated, dismissing Riyadh's allegations of an intercepted drone as a baseless fabrication. The military leadership emphasized that repeated Saudi accusations of strikes near holy sites are politically motivated cover for battlefield setbacks. "The defeats inflicted by our forces on the Saudi enemy have caused it confusion and disorientation, leading it to fabricate events and invent facts," the statement read, adding that "whenever the Saudi enemy receives slaps on the field, it resorts to the slander that our armed forces are targeting Holy Mecca—a falsehood and a lie both old and new." Yemen's Armed Forces further accused the Saudi-led coalition of seeking external military intervention to prop up its position in the ongoing regional war. "The defeats received by the Saudi enemy at the hands of our fighters have driven it to appeal to the Israeli enemy to intervene on its side against our people," the military statement asserted, reiterating that all Yemeni deep-strike operations explicitly target military and strategic assets rather than civilian or religious centers.