TEL AVIV, Israel — A rocket attack on a football stadium in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights killed at least 10 people and injured many others, including children, on Saturday, hours after an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon killed three members of the radical Hezbollah group.
The attack was the deadliest on an Israeli target since fighting broke out between the two foes in October, raising fears of a wider fire in the area.
Hezbollah said it attacked a military base in the Golan Heights in retaliation for an Israeli attack on a Lebanese village.
Hezbollah’s chief spokesman Mohammed Afif told The Associated Press that the group “categorically denies launching the attack” on Majdal Shams.
The Israeli military said in a statement on Saturday that based on intelligence it had, “the rocket fire towards Majdal Shams was the work of the Hezbollah terrorist organization.”
“The terrorist group Hezbollah was behind the launch of rockets at the Majdal Shams football stadium earlier this evening, causing numerous civilian casualties, including children,” the statement read.
Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency center initially reported that 11 people were injured, nine of them seriously, all aged between 10 and 20 years old. A scene of being sent to an ambulance.
“These are kids on the football field,” local council president Beni Ben Muvchar told Israel’s Channel 12. Senior commander of Hezbollah.
The Israeli military said it found a projectile crossing into the area from Lebanon, adding that it was working with the Israel Defense Forces to evacuate the injured. Channel 12 showed footage of a massive explosion in a valley in the town.
Hezbollah said in a statement that its militants fired Katyusha rockets at Israeli army posts in the Golan Heights in response to Israeli air strikes on villages in southern Lebanon. The group said earlier that three of its members were killed on Saturday but did not specify where. The Israeli military said its air force struck a Hezbollah arms depot in the border village of Kafakira, adding that militants were inside at the time.
Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 Mideast War and annexed the area in 1981.
Hamas launched a raid on October 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking 250 people hostage. The war in Gaza broke out, and Israel and Hezbollah exchanged fire almost every day. The Israeli offensive has so far killed more than 39,000 people, displaced more than 80 percent of the territory’s people and triggered a humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip, according to local health authorities.
Fighting between Lebanon and Israel has intensified over the past few weeks as Israeli airstrikes and Hezbollah rocket and drone strikes move farther and farther from the border.
Since early October, Israeli air strikes 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 were killed.
