A little before 6:50 pm on Tuesday, Saudi air defences caught a drone south of Makkah and brought it down before it got anywhere near the restricted airspace around Islam’s holiest city. The coalition fighting in Yemen pinned it on the Houthis. The Houthis pinned it on nobody, insisting they hadn’t targeted Makkah at all and calling the account a lie. Within the hour, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation was calling it a violation of the sanctity of Islam’s holy sites, and the coalition reached for a phrase that isn’t going anywhere soon: the security of Makkah is a red line. Nobody needed that explained. Pakistanis send hundreds of thousands of people to that city every year for Hajj and Umrah. This was never staying a security briefing for long.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was out with a statement within hours. Dastardly, heinous, an outrageous act that left Pakistanis saddened and........

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