Israel has vowed to ‘hit the enemy hard’ after rocket fire from Lebanon killed 12 children in the Golan Heights region, sparking fears that war could spread across the Middle East as the United States issued desperate calls for calm. A dozen people aged between 10 and 16 were killed and at least 37 were injured in explosions on a football pitch on Saturday, prompting outrage in Israel as officials blamed Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement for firing a Falaq-1 Iranian rocket.
The incident, described by Tel-Aviv as a ‘massacre’ and ‘the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians’ since October 7, saw Israel respond with a wave of drone attacks on Lebanon last night ahead of what many fear will be a larger, more deadly retaliation. Iran-backed Hezbollah – which has regularly targeted Israeli military positions – denied any responsibility, but the US on Sunday also determined the deaths were caused by a rocket fired from Lebanon.
‘This attack was conducted by Lebanese Hezbollah. It was their rocket, and launched from an area they control,’ the White House said, describing the attack as ‘horrific’. US diplomats have since been engaged in furious discussions with Israeli and Lebanese officials to calm tensions as Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on all parties to contain the spread of violence. But Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – a fierce critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza – sensationally declared yesterday that Turkish forces could ‘enter’ Israel in a cryptic suggestion of a possible armed intervention.
The rocket fire on Majdal Shams, a town in the Golan Heights whose population are predominantly Arabic-speaking Druze, hit a football pitch and killed a dozen children. Many residents of the Druze town have not accepted Israeli nationality since Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967, but the area is administered by Israel. The death toll was initially registered at 11, but an 11-year-old boy earlier reported missing after the attack was in fact the 12th fatality, police confirmed late Sunday, as thousands of residents crowded the town’s streets in a tearful funeral ceremony for many of the dead.
Riad Kahwaji, head of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, said the explosion came as Hezbollah targeted a position about 2.4 kilometres (1.5 miles) from the town, putting the football pitch ‘within margin of error’ of the inaccurate rockets. But ‘the possibility of a misfire’ from an Israeli air-defence missile could not be ruled out and there should be an independent investigation, he added. The incident prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to return early from a visit to the United States, and he went immediately into a security cabinet meeting upon his arrival to discuss a response to the Iran-backed group’s alleged attack. ‘Hezbollah will pay a heavy price – a price it has not paid before’, Netanyahu was reported as saying.
After the meeting, his office said: ‘The members of the cabinet authorised the prime minister and the defence minister to decide on the manner and timing of the response against the Hezbollah terrorist organisation.’ It offered no further details. Israel’s hawkish Defence Minister Yoav Gallant (Pictured) earlier Sunday visited the scene of the attack, where he vowed the IDF would ‘hit the enemy hard’, while Israel’s foreign ministry said Hezbollah had ‘crossed all red lines’. Meanwhile, in expectation of Israel’s retaliation, Hezbollah evacuated several positions close to the border and in eastern Lebanon, a source close to the group said.
Israel’s military said later Sunday it had hit Hezbollah targets ‘both deep inside Lebanese territory and in southern Lebanon’. The UN special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, and UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) chief Aroldo Lazaro said in a joint statement that intensifying exchanges of fire ‘could ignite a wider conflagration that would engulf the entire region in a catastrophe beyond belief’. Lebanon urged ‘an immediate cessation of hostilities on all fronts’, later calling for an ‘international investigation’ into the strike.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres added that all parties must ‘exercise maximum restraint’, while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (pictured) said: ‘I emphasize (Israel’s) right to defend its citizens and our determination to make sure that they’re able to do that,’ Blinken said during a news conference in Tokyo. ‘But we also don’t want to see the conflict escalate. We don’t want to see it spread.’ Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s backers in Tehran instead warned Israel that any new military ‘adventures’ in Lebanon could lead to ‘unforeseen consequences’. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani warned that ‘any ignorant action of the Zionist regime can lead to the broadening of the scope of instability, insecurity and war in the region’.
And Turkey’s Erdogan, speaking at a meeting of his ruling AK Party in his hometown of Rize, appeared to legitimise concern that military action in the region could ramp up. ‘We must be very strong so that Israel can’t do these ridiculous things to Palestine. Just like we entered Karabakh, just like we entered Libya, we might do similar to them,’ Erdogan declared. In 2020, Ankara sent military personnel to Libya in support of the United Nations-recognised Government of National Accord of Libya. It has denied any direct role in Azerbaijan’s military operations in Nagorno-Karabakh, but said last year it was using ‘all means’, including military training and modernisation, to support its close ally. Cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah since October has killed at least 527 people in Lebanon. Most of the dead have been fighters but the toll includes more than 100 civilians.
According to Israel’s army, 22 soldiers and 24 civilians have been killed so far in northern Israel. Hezbollah has said its cross-border fire is an act of support for Palestinian Islamists from Hamas who have been fighting Israel’s military in Gaza since October 7, when they attacked southern Israel. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has said that if a ceasefire were reached in Gaza, his movement would stop cross-border attacks. The October 7 attacks on Israel, authored by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups, resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to tallies based on official Israeli figures. Militants also seized 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 39,324 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, which does not provide details on civilian and militant deaths. In Gaza’s southern city of Khan Yunis on Sunday, the civil defence agency reported five killed in an Israeli strike that hit several tents housing displaced Palestinians in a humanitarian zone. Israel’s military ordered the evacuation of several blocks of Al-Bureij and Al-Shuhada in central Gaza, warning that it would ‘operate forcefully’ there. Separately, Philippe Lazzarini, who heads the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said on social media site X that only ’14 percent of areas in Gaza’ were not subject to evacuation orders. He accused Israel of creating ‘havoc and panic’ with frequent evacuation orders. Blinken said the best way to prevent the Gaza conflict from escalating ‘is to get the ceasefire in Gaza that we’re working so hard on’. Months of effort have failed to secure a deal, but Egyptian state-linked media said talks were to take place Sunday in Rome.
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