Children and teens among 12 dead in Golan Heights attack that Israel blames on Hezbollah, raising fears of major escalation

(CNN) — At least 12 people, including children, were killed when a rocket hit a village in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights Saturday, Israeli officials said, in an attack that has raised fears of a major escalation in the long-running conflict.

Israel said it had identified “approximately 30 projectiles” crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory in a barrage it blamed on the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and described as the deadliest against it since October 7. Hezbollah has admitted targeting other parts of the Golan Heights but “firmly denies” it was behind the deadly strike.

Overnight following the attack, Israeli warplanes conducted airstrikes against Hezbollah targets “deep inside Lebanese territory and in southern Lebanon,” according to a statement from the military on Sunday morning. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) hit a series of Hezbollah targets including weapons caches and “terrorist infrastructure,” the statement said.

The Golan Heights attack risks significantly escalating the situation at the countries’ border, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Saturday vowing Hezbollah will “pay a heavy price.”

Israel and Hezbollah have been trading fire across the demarcation line for almost 10 months with increasing ferocity. Even before Saturday’s attack regional leaders had warned the conflict is reaching a boiling point.

In addition to the 12 deaths, at least 29 people were injured in the attack in Majdal Shams, a village that is home to a large Druze community.

Some 20,000 Druze Arabs live in the Golan Heights, an area Israel seized from Syria in 1967 during the Six-Day War and annexed in 1981. Considered occupied territory under international law and UN Security Council resolutions, the area is also home to about 50,000 Israeli Jewish settlers. Most Druze there identify as Syrian and have rejected offers of Israeli citizenship.

Among the sites hit in the attack was a soccer field where children and teenagers had been playing, IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said. He described the barrage as “the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians since October 7.”

“This is a very serious incident and we will act accordingly,” he said.

Hagari said the rocket that hit the soccer field was a “Falaq 1 Iranian rocket carrying a 50kg warhead.” “This is a model that is owned exclusively by Hezbollah, and tonight it caused the deaths of 12 young boys and girls,” he added.

Netanyahu on Saturday announced he was cutting short by several hours his visit to the United States and returning to Israel because of the attack and said he would convene a security cabinet meeting immediately upon his return.

The prime minister said he was “shocked” by the attack. “I can say that the State of Israel will not be silent about this. We will not put this off the agenda,” he said.

On Sunday, Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visited Majdal Shams and told local leaders the country and army were mourning with them.

“Hezbollah is responsible for this and they will pay the price,” he said.

‘Dire sights’

Adeeb Safadi, a resident of Majdal Shams, told CNN that those killed in the rocket attack on the soccer field were all Druze children from local villages, boys between the ages of eight and 15.

“They were attending a football training class with a coach whose fate is still unknown. Ten of the killed have been identified, but there are more who were torn apart and are still unidentified,” said Safadi, who lives some 600 meters from the site of the attack.

Another eyewitness, Taymor Wili, who lives near the soccer field, told CNN he saw the strike on the field seconds after he heard the air raid signal.

“It’s Saturday, it’s summer, kids are playing, and we kind of got used to the situation, because it’s been going on for a while… nothing like this ever happened before,” he said, adding that there hadn’t been enough time for the children to react to the warning alarm.

“We tried to help, but it was beyond our help, there was nothing we could do,” he said of the situation on the field. “It’s a dark day for our town … this day will be remembered for generations to come.”

Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency service reported that the fatalities included “teenagers and young adults” whose ages ranged from 10 to 20 years old. It said a further 29 people were injured, six of whom were in a serious condition.

Idan Avshalom, a senior medic from MDA, said the team saw destruction and fire when arriving at the scene.

“Injured people were lying on the grass and the sights were dire. We immediately began triaging the injured, some of the injured were sent to local clinics and our teams were also directed to the clinics,” he said, adding that there were additional alerts as they worked to save the injured.

Ziv Medical Center in the northern Israeli city of Safed said it had received 26 injured people, five of whom were admitted to the trauma center.

Police are “securing the area and searching for additional remnants to eliminate any further risk to the public,” the Police Spokesperson’s Unit said.

Major escalation

The attack on Saturday is a major escalation in what has been an extremely volatile few months in the border area.

Officially, Lebanon and Israel are – and have been for decades – in a state of war, but the recent tensions have so far not escalated into a full-blown conflict.

The strikes have become more frequent in recent weeks and both Hezbollah and Israel are targeting sites deeper and deeper into each other’s territory.

The tensions increased further in the past few weeks when Israel killed two high-ranking Hezbollah commanders – Sami Taleb Abdullah in May and Muhammed Neamah Naser in June – blaming them for directing attacks both before and after Hamas’ October 7 assault from Gaza. Hezbollah retaliated by firing hundreds of missiles into Israel.

During the October attack by Hamas, at least 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 others abducted, according to Israeli authorities. Israeli military action in Gaza has since killed 39,258 Palestinians and injured another 90,589, according to the Ministry of Health there. As of early July, nearly 2 million people had been displaced in Gaza – almost the entire population, according to figures from the UN.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog decried Saturday’s attack as a “terrible and shocking disaster” and vowed Israel would “firmly defend its citizens and its sovereignty.”

“The world cannot continue to sit in silence in the face of (Hezbollah leader Hassan) Nasrallah’s terror attacks, which come at the behest of the empire of evil in Iran,” he said in a post on X.

Israeli opposition leader Benny Gantz traveled to Majdal Shams on Saturday, calling on Netanyahu to increase the IDF presence in the area.

“We have a moral obligation in the south to return the hostages home, and we have a strategic obligation to return security to the north and the people to their homes,” Gantz said.

Some IDF units previously stationed along the country’s northern border have been redeployed to southern Israel following the October 7 attack and the subsequent Israeli ground invasion of Gaza.

The Lebanese government said after the attack that it condemned “all acts of violence and attacks against all civilians,” Lebanese state news agency NNA reported.

The government also called for “an immediate cessation of hostilities on all fronts” and said that “targeting civilians constitutes a blatant violation of international law and is contrary to the principles of humanity,” NNA reported.

Hezbollah ‘firmly denies’ involvement

While the IDF has blamed the attack on Hezbollah, the militant group denied involvement in a statement on Telegram Saturday.

“The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon firmly denies the allegations made by some enemy media outlets and various media platforms regarding the targeting of Majdal Shams,” it said.

“We confirm that the Islamic Resistance has no connection to the incident whatsoever and firmly denies all false claims in this regard,” the statement continued.

Earlier on Saturday, Hezbollah had said it targeted an Israeli military site in a different part of the occupied Golan Heights.

But the IDF said its analysis showed the rocket launched at Majdal Shams was “carried out from an area located north of the village of Chebaa in southern Lebanon.”

Hagari, the IDF spokesperson, said Hezbollah was lying when denying it was behind the attack. “Our intelligence is clear – Hezbollah is responsible for killing innocent children. Ten-year-old children and once again, the brutality of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization was exposed,” he said.

The White House on Saturday condemned the attack and reiterated its “iron-clad” support for Israel.

“Israel continues to face severe threats to its security, as the world saw today, and the United States will continue to support efforts to end these terrible attacks along the Blue Line, which must be a top priority,” a National Security Council Spokesperson said in a written statement to CNN, referring to the demarcation line between Israel and Lebanon.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called for an independent international investigation into the attacks and urged restraint.

“Shocking images from the soccer field in the Druze town of Majdal Shams. I strongly condemn this bloodbath. We urge all parties to exercise utmost restraint and avoid further escalation,” he said in a statement posted on X.

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