Israel has vowed to make Syria pay the price for Hezbollah’s involvement in a rocket attack in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that killed 12 children, raising fears of an all-out war.
Hezbollah, however, denies being behind the strike. It is the deadliest to hit Israel or Israeli-controlled territory since the October 7 attacks. Israeli warplanes conducted airstrikes against Hezbollah targets “deep inside Lebanese territory” and along the border overnight Sunday.
It was not immediately clear whether there were any casualties from those strikes.
On a visit to the town of Majdal Shams near the Syrian and Lebanese borders, where the rocket attack left children and teenagers dead on Saturday, Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant pledged a heavy response, saying, “We will hit the enemy hard.”
The Saturday attacks on the region involved “approximately 30 projectiles” crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory, in a barrage Israel’s military quickly blamed on the Iran-backed militant group. It killed 12 children and left 44 people injured, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.
The children killed in the strike had been playing on a soccer field, according to a list from Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials. American officials backed Israel’s assessment, saying “every indication” suggested the strike was a rocket fired by Hezbollah.
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. The area is also home to about 25,000 Israeli Jewish settlers. Most Druze there identify as Syrian and have rejected offers of Israeli citizenship. The Regional Council of Majdal Shams said Sunday that none of the 12 children killed had Israeli citizenship.
Hundreds of mourners lined streets on Sunday for a funeral procession honoring the victims of the strike.
Fears of a Middle-Eastern war spreading have persisted since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. With this latest attack on Israeli territory, although the victims are not Jewish, all eyes are on Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to see how Israel responds.
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