Strike in Israeli-controlled Golan Heights kills at least 11. Hezbollah denies a role
A rocket attack Saturday on a soccer field in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights killed at least 11 children and teens, Israeli authorities said, in the deadliest strike on an Israeli target along the country’s northern border since the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah erupted. It risked unleashing a broader regional war.
Israel blamed the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah for the strike in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, but Hezbollah rushed to deny any role. Israel’s military called it a “very serious” event and said it would act accordingly.
“Hezbollah fired a rocket at children playing soccer in northern Israel. It then lied and claimed they did not carry out the attack,” said the military’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari. He called it the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 that sparked the war in Gaza.
Hezbollah chief spokesman Mohammed Afif told the Associated Press that the group “categorically denies carrying out an attack on Majdal Shams.” It is unusual for Hezbollah to deny an attack. The militant group said its fighters carried out nine different attacks using rockets and explosive drones against Israeli military posts, the last of which targeted the army command of the Haramoun Brigade in Maaleh Golani with Katyusha rockets. It said it was in response to Israeli airstrikes on villages in southern Lebanon.
Israel has assassinated two dozen Hezbollah commanders in Lebanon since last fall amid an intelligence war employing cellphones, drones and fake rocks.
The strike followed earlier cross-border violence on Saturday, when Hezbollah said three of its fighters were killed, without specifying where. Israel’s military said its air force targeted a Hezbollah arms depot on the border village of Kfar Kila, adding that militants were inside at the time.
Video aired on Israeli Channel 12 showed a large blast in one of the valleys in the Druze town of Majdal Shams, in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed in 1981. Video showed paramedics rushing stretchers off the soccer field toward waiting ambulances.
Ha’il Mahmoud, a resident of Majdal Shams, told Channel 12 that children were playing soccer when the rocket hit the field. He said a siren was heard seconds before the rocket hit, but there was no time to take shelter.
Christian areas scattered across Hezbollah-dominated southern Lebanon find themselves on the front line of a fight that few see as theirs.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was on a visit to the United States, said he would cut short his trip by several hours, without specifying when he would return.
Lebanon’s government in a statement, without mentioning Majdal Shams, urged “immediate cessation of hostilities on all fronts” and condemned all attacks on civilians.
Israel and Hezbollah have been trading fire since Oct. 8, a day after Hamas militants stormed into southern Israel. In recent weeks, the exchange of fire along the Lebanon-Israel border has intensified, with Israeli airstrikes and rocket and drone attacks by Hezbollah striking deeper and farther away from the border.
Saturday’s violence comes as Israel and Hamas are weighing a cease-fire proposal that would wind down the nearly 10-month war and free the roughly 110 hostages who remain captive in Gaza. Hamas’ surprise attack on Oct. 7 killed some 1,200 people and took 250 others hostage. Israel launched an offensive that has killed more than 39,000 people, according to local health authorities, displaced more than 80% of the territory’s people and triggered a humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli airstrikes hit a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in central Gaza, killing dozens. Military orders evacuation from a humanitarian zone.
Since early October, Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon have killed more than 450 people, mostly Hezbollah members, but also about 90 civilians and noncombatants. On the Israeli side, 21 soldiers and 13 civilians had been killed before Saturday.
Associated Press writer Goldenberg reported from Tel Aviv, Mroue reported from Beirut.
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