Israeli aircraft have carried out attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon following a rocket barrage that it said the group had fired at a soccer pitch on Israeli territory killed 12 people, including children.
The Air Force overnight had “struck a series of Hezbollah terror targets both deep inside Lebanese territory and in southern Lebanon, including weapons caches and terrorist infrastructure in the areas of Chabriha, Borj El Chmali, and Beqaa, Kfarkela, Rab El Thalathine, Khiam, and Tayr Harfa,” the military said on Sunday.
The rocket barrage killed 12 people, including three children, and wounded 29 others in the annexed Golan Heights, making it the deadliest single attack in Israeli territory since Oct 7.
The IDF said Hezbollah was behind the strike, which hit the Druze village of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights.
A local in the village told The Telegraph the attack was “horrible”, with dead children lying on the football field. Idan Avshalom, a rescue worker from the MDA emergency unit in Israel, witnessed “severe scenes of casualties and fatalities, destruction, and burning objects” on the soccer field.
The spiritual leader of the community, Sheikh Muafak Tarif, said: “It’s impossible to imagine and describe the horrific images of children and their smashed [body] parts strewn on the grass.”
Foreign Minister Israel Katz told Channel 12 that Hezbollah had “crossed all red lines. We are facing an all-out war.”
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said the world cannot continue to sit in silence in the face of “Hassan Nasrallah’s terror attacks, which come at the behest of the empire of evil in Iran.”
IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari called it the deadliest attack against Israel since the October 7 massacre: “We are in an escalating war and tonight’s incident is a very difficult incident, children have been targeted and those children are Druze Israeli citizens.”
Hezbollah denied being behind the attack.
An IDF official in a briefing said that “shooting at civilians is part of Hezbollah’s” warfare, and that some 40 rockets were fired across northern Israel on Saturday.
Hamas official Basem Naim also said that the Gaza-based group was not behind the attack.
Hamas official Basem Naim said that the Gaza-based group was not behind the attack.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced his return to Israel from the US will “be brought forward as quickly as possible” after the attack in the Golan Heights. He warned that Hezbollah “will pay a heavy price for this attack, one that it has not paid so far”.
Several ministers in his government called for a harsh response. Finance Minister and member of the security cabinet Bezalel Smotrich said Hezbollah leader Nasrallah should “pay with his head”, while Economy Minister Nir Barkat said Israel needs to “change the equation” in the north and make Hezbollah and the state of Lebanon “pay a heavy price”.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid also called on the government to respond to the attack and “put an end to abandonment of the north.”
Benny Gantz, who served in the war cabinet until June 9, said he would support the government in any “determined and effective response that will restore security to the citizens of the north.”
Saturday’s attack came after Israel launched airstrikes in southern Lebanon, reportedly killing two Hezbollah members.
Some 60,000 Israeli civilians have been internally displaced along the border with Lebanon since Hezbollah began its attacks on October 8.
Hezbollah has fired over 5,000 drones, anti-tanks missiles and rockets at northern Israel since then. Over 40 people have been killed in the attacks, including 21 civilians. Israel has responded to the daily attacks by launching airstrikes at Hezbollah targets across Lebanon, killing over 377 of its members.
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