JERUSALEM/BEIRUT (Reuters) -Ten people, including children, were killed in a rocket attack on a football ground in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday, Israel’s ambulance service said, with Israel accusing Hezbollah of the strike but the Lebanese group denying any role.
Israel’s military said it was preparing a response to the rocket attack, the deadliest strike in Israel or Israeli-annexed territory since the start of the conflict in Gaza.
Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel have been trading fire in areas at or near the Lebanese-Israeli border, in a conflict that has stirred fears of a full-blown war between the heavily armed adversaries.
The Israeli ambulance service said 13 more people were wounded by a rocket fired from Lebanon that hit a football pitch in the Druze village of Majdal Shams.
“We witnessed great destruction when we arrived at the soccer field, as well as items that were on fire. There were casualties on the grass and the scene was gruesome,” Idan Avshalom, a medic with the Magen David Adom ambulance service, said.
A witness told Reuters: “It landed in the soccer pitch, all of them are children … many bodies and remains are in field we don’t know who they are.” She asked not to be named.
The attack on the soccer pitch followed an Israeli strike in Lebanon that killed four militants on Saturday. Two security sources in Lebanon said the four fighters killed in the Israeli strike on Kfarkila in southern Lebanon were members of different armed groups, with at least one of them belonging to Hezbollah.
The Israeli military said its aircraft had targeted a military structure belonging to Hezbollah, after identifying a militant cell entering the building.
At least 30 rockets were then fired from Lebanon across the border, the military said.
“According to an IDF situational assessment and the intelligence in our possession, the rocket launch toward Majdal Shams was carried out by the Hezbollah terrorist organization,” the military said.
In a written statement, Hezbollah said: “The Islamic Resistance has absolutely nothing to do with the incident, and categorically denies all false allegations in this regard”.
Hezbollah claimed at least four attacks, including with Katyusha rockets, in retaliation for the Kfarkila attacks. However senior Hezbollah media representative Mohammad Afif denied responsibility for the strike on Majdal Shams.
Hezbollah and Israel have been trading fire since October, after Hamas’ attack on southern Israel triggered the Gaza war, in their worst escalation since 2006.
The Golan Heights were part of Syria until 1967, when Israel captured most of the area in the Six Day War, occupying it and annexing it in 1981. That unilateral annexation was not recognised internationally, and Syria demands the return of the territory.
(Reporting by Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem, Maya Gebeilly and Laila Bassam in Beirut; Writing by Helen Popper; Editing by Frances Kerry and Andrew Heavens)
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