LAHORE: For two days, almost no one outside Saudi Arabia knew that a drone had struck the power station supplying electricity to Al-Masjid-e-Nabawi, the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah.
The drone hit the Taibah electricity distribution station at 5:11 am on Tuesday, September 29, shortly before Fajr prayers, while worshippers would have been making their way to the mosque. The Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen disclosed the attack only on Thursday afternoon and blamed Yemen’s Houthi movement.
What happened to the mosque’s electricity
Coalition spokesman Major General Turki Al-Maliki said the strike knocked one transformer out of service but did not affect the wider electricity network. Officials reported no casualties and no major power cuts, and the mosque’s lights, cooling and sound systems kept running without interruption. Images released after the attack show visible damage at the facility.
Al-Maliki called the station a civilian facility and described the strike as part of a continuing Houthi campaign to target the Two Holy Mosques and provoke Muslims around the world.
Why the news took two days
The coalition said it had waited until investigators completed an operational review and examined the drone’s wreckage, which it said established Houthi involvement in planning and carrying out the attack.
There was a reason for that caution. Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia blamed drones launched from Iraqi territory, not Yemen, for attacks on the East-West oil pipeline in the Riyadh and Madinah regions. With threats now coming from more than one direction, identifying where a drone was launched has become a forensic task rather than an assumption. Riyadh appears to have chosen accuracy over speed.
The delay also left room for denial. A Houthi military source quoted by the group’s Saba news agency rejected the accusation as a “lie”, saying it was meant to hide Saudi Arabia’s failure to prove its earlier claim about Makkah.
The deeper concern
The more troubling question is not the damage but the distance. Last month, the coalition said it had destroyed a Houthi drone south of Makkah before it entered the holy city’s restricted airspace. This drone was not stopped. It flew far deeper into the kingdom and reached its target in Madinah.
That makes it the second attack involving the holy cities in two weeks. It is also the first in this campaign to hit infrastructure that serves one of the Two Holy Mosques. Saudi officials have not explained how the drone avoided air defences, and the coalition said only that it would continue measures to deter the Houthis and protect the holy mosques and their visitors.
Pakistan’s position
Pakistan condemned the attack in the strongest terms. In a statement, it said the people of Pakistan were saddened and disturbed by the “dastardly and heinous” act. No words were strong enough to express the anguish and distress Pakistanis felt at such a reprehensible and unforgivable act.
When the drone was aimed at Makkah, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said such an act gravely offends the religious sentiments of Muslims worldwide, and pledged Pakistan’s support for protecting the Haramain Sharifain. At the UN General Assembly last week, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif warned that any threat to the sanctity of Makkah and Madinah was a red line that must never be crossed.
On Wednesday, a day before the Madinah strike was announced, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif went further, declaring that any enemy of Saudi Arabia is an enemy of Pakistan. He said protecting the holy sites was a duty for Pakistan even without the Makkah Agreement.
Gulf condemnation
Gulf capitals responded within hours of Thursday’s announcement:
- UAE: Its Foreign Ministry called the strike a “flagrant violation” of Saudi sovereignty.
- Bahrain: It called the attack a dangerous escalation involving Islamic holy sites and urged the UN Security Council to take a firm stand. It also called for the enforcement of Resolution 2216, the Security Council’s 2015 resolution on the Yemen conflict.
- Kuwait: It said Saudi security was an integral part of Kuwait’s own security and that of the wider Gulf.
- GCC: Secretary General Jasem Al Budaiwi called the attack a grave escalation that had “crossed all red lines”.
Türkiye, Qatar, and the OIC
Qatar firmly rejected the targeting of civilians and holy sites, while Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan called attacks on Saudi Arabia unacceptable. The OIC called violations of the holy sites’ sanctity an intolerable transgression that must be deterred.
The Muslim world’s bond with Madinah
For more than a billion Muslims, Madinah is not an ordinary city. It is home to the Prophet’s Mosque and his resting place, and the second holiest site in Islam after Makkah. Even an indirect strike on the infrastructure that keeps the mosque running carries an emotional weight that no transformer damage report can capture.
That feeling has been building for weeks. In a recent Friday sermon, the imam of the Prophet’s Mosque, Sheikh Abdul Mohsen Al-Qasim, condemned Houthi threats to the holy cities. In Pakistan, religious parties held nationwide protests after the Makkah attempt. Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith leader Allama Hafiz Hisham Elahi Zaheer said protecting the Haramain was a collective responsibility of the entire Muslim Ummah, not of one country alone.
What the Makkah pact may do
The attack came hours after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told the Shura Council that the Makkah Defence Alliance with Türkiye and Pakistan aimed to shield the region from conflict. He warned that the kingdom “will not hesitate to respond firmly” to any threat to its security.
The pact, signed in Makkah on August 7, treats an armed attack on any one of the three members as an attack on all. Islamabad has stressed that the agreement is purely defensive and open to other regional states, and Bangladesh has said it will consider joining. The military chiefs of the three countries have already met in Riyadh to discuss the threats to the holy cities.
No joint military response has been announced. But the Madinah strike is the first real test of the pact since it was signed. It challenges an alliance built partly around protecting the holy places, and it was carried out by a group that is not a state and denies responsibility.
Securing the Two Holy Mosques
The holy cities host millions of pilgrims and visitors every year, and their security now depends on more than ground patrols and crowd management. The Madinah strike shows that the threat has moved into the air, and that civilian infrastructure supporting worship has become a target.
The coming weeks will show whether Riyadh strengthens air defences around Makkah and Madinah, whether its partners in the Makkah pact take on a visible role, and whether diplomacy can stop a conflict that has now reached the edge of the holiest places.
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