Saudi Arabia's military coalition intercepted six ballistic missiles fired by Yemen's Houthi movement, which targeted the Red Sea port city of Yanbu and the inland city of Taif, with civil defence alerts briefly issued for Mecca and several other regions. The attacks are part of an escalating Houthi campaign since a ceasefire collapsed in July, during which the Iran-backed group has imposed a naval blockade, struck Saudi oil tankers, and seized stretches of the Red Sea coastline critical to Saudi energy exports. French President Emmanuel Macron announced that Paris would deploy soldiers, radar systems, and air defence equipment to protect Yanbu (Saudi Arabia's primary crude export terminal on the Red Sea, connected to its main oil fields by the cross-country Petroline pipeline), stressing the deployment was defensive in nature and not intended to draw France into the broader conflict.