TEL AVIV, Israel — A rocket attack on Saturday at a soccer stadium in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights killed at least 10 people and wounded several others, including children, hours after an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon killed three members of the Hezbollah militant group.
The attack was the deadliest on an Israeli target since fighting between the two sides broke out in October, raising fears of a wider conflict in the region.
Hezbollah said it attacked a military base in the Golan Heights in retaliation for Israeli strikes on a village in Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s main spokesman, Mohammed Afif, told The Associated Press that the group “absolutely denies carrying out the attack on Majdal Shams.”
The Israeli military said in a statement on Saturday that according to intelligence it had, “the rocket launch towards Majdal Shams was carried out by the Hezbollah terrorist organization.”
“The terrorist organization Hezbollah was behind the rocket attack on a football stadium in Majdal Shams that resulted in numerous civilian casualties, including children, early this evening,” the statement said.
Israel’s Magen David Adom ambulance service initially reported 11 people injured, nine in critical condition and all aged between 10 and 20. Israeli public television station Kan aired footage of several people being taken away on stretchers from a football field in the town of Majdal Shams.
“These are just kids on a soccer field,” Beni Ben Muvchar, the head of the local council, told Israel’s Channel 12. “Today, a red line has been crossed,” he said, calling on Israeli leaders to begin targeting senior Hezbollah commanders.
The Israeli military said a projectile was detected flying from Lebanon toward the area, adding that it was working with the MDA to evacuate the injured. Channel 12 aired footage of a large explosion in one of the town’s valleys.
Hezbollah said in a statement that its fighters fired Katyusha rockets at an Israeli army post in the Golan Heights in response to Israeli airstrikes on villages in southern Lebanon. The group had earlier said three of its members were killed on Saturday, without specifying the location. The Israeli military said its air force targeted a Hezbollah weapons depot in the border village of Kfar Kila, adding that militants were inside at the time.
Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed it in 1981.
Israel and Hezbollah have traded near daily fire since the war in Gaza began after a surprise Hamas offensive on October 7 that killed some 1,200 people and took another 250 hostage. Israel launched an offensive that has so far killed more than 39,000 people, according to local health officials, displaced more than 80 percent of the territory’s population and caused a humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip.
In recent weeks, fighting along the Lebanon-Israel border has intensified with Israeli airstrikes and Hezbollah missile and drone attacks targeting deeper and farther away. boundary.
Since early October, Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon have killed more than 450 people, mostly Hezbollah members, but also about 90 civilians and non-combatants. On the Israeli side, 21 soldiers and 13 civilians have been killed.
