At least 10 dead including children as Israel blames Hezbollah for rocket attack

CNN
 — 

At least 10 people, including children, were killed when multiple rockets hit a village in the Golan Heights Saturday – an attack described by the Israeli authorities as the deadliest assault on Israeli civilians since October 7.

Israel said it had identified “approximately 30 projectiles” crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory and blamed the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah for the barrage. Hezbollah rejected the accusation, saying it “firmly denied” firing the rockets.

At least 29 people were injured in the attack in Majdal Shams, a village in the Israeli-controlled northern Golan Heights 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 the 1967 war and which is considered occupied territory under international law and UN Security Council resolutions. Most Druze there identify as Syrian and have rejected offers of Israeli citizenship.

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

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced he was cutting short his visit to the United States and returning to Israel because of the attack, the Israeli Government Press Office announced.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog decried the attack as a “terrible and shocking disaster” and vowed Israel would “defend” its citizens.

“Hezbollah terrorists brutally attacked and murdered children today, whose only crime was going out to play soccer. They did not return,” he said in a post on X.

“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. The State of Israel will firmly defend its citizens and its sovereignty.”

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.

The government of Lebanon condemned “all acts of violence and attacks against all civilians,” after a rocket attack killed at least 10 people in the town of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights on Saturday, Lebanese state news agency NNA.

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

Evacuation helicopters, ambulances and intensive care vehicles have been dispatched to the scene.

Idan Avshalom, a senior medic from MDA said, “We arrived at a soccer field and saw destruction and objects on fire. 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. During the incident there were additional alerts and the medical treatment of the injured is still ongoing.”

Ziv Medical Center in the northern Israeli city of Safed said it had received 26 injured people, five of whom were…