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A man stands near a damaged gate around a football pitch after a reported strike from Lebanon fell in Majdal Shams village in the Israeli-annexed Golan area on 28 July 2024. Israel's military said Hezbollah fired the rocket from Lebanon, hitting a football pitch in the Druze town of Majdal Shams and killing 12 youngsters, who were between 10 and 20 years old. Another 18 youths were wounded in the attack, said the emergency services. (Photo by Menahem Kahana / AFP) (Photo by MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images)

Deadly Rocket Strike in Golan Heights Threatens to Escalate Hezbollah-Israeli Military Conflict

A rocket strike in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights killed 12 people on Saturday, 27 July. Most of the people killed were children and teenagers playing football on a pitch in the town of Majdal Shams. Twenty other people were injured.

A siren did go off moments before the explosion, and there was a bomb shelter right next to the football pitch, but there was not enough time for the children to take shelter before the impact. The Israeli military said it is investigating why the rocket wasn’t intercepted, the Associated Press reported.

Israel’s air force blamed Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah for the attack, but the group strongly denied involvement. As retaliation for the strike, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducted airstrikes against seven Hezbollah targets inside Lebanese territory.

The rising tensions and back-and-forth missile launches have the potential to start an all-out war between Hezbollah and Israel, the BBC reported. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed retaliation for the attack, saying Hezbollah would “pay a heavy price.” IDF spokespeople claimed that the rocket was an Iranian-made Falaq-1 that is exclusively owned by Hezbollah, and that other Hezbollah-claimed missile strikes from the same day aimed for a military compound 2 miles from the football pitch.

Cabinet ministers authorized Netanyahu and his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, on 28 July to decide on the nature and timing of a military response to the rocket attack, The New York Times reported.

Since the 7 October Hamas attack against Israel and the subsequent Israeli offensive in Gaza, the IDF and Hezbollah have regularly exchanged fire, the BBC explained. Hezbollah has launched rocket attacks at northern Israel and Israeli military positions in the Golan Heights, and its forces have also fired anti-tank missiles at armored vehicles and used explosive drones to attack military targets. The IDF has retaliated using airstrikes, as well as tank and artillery fire against Hezbollah positions in Lebanon.

According to the United Nations (UN), the attacks have displaced more than 90,000 people in Lebanon, with around 366 Hezbollah fighters and 100 civilians killed. Israeli officials say that 60,000 of their civilians have had to flee Hezbollah attacks and 33 people have been killed, including 10 civilians. That number is likely to change given this weekend's missile strike.

“Despite the fighting, observers say that up till now both sides have aimed to contain hostilities without crossing the line into full-scale war,” the BBC noted. “But fears are that a particularly deadly incident could cause the situation to spiral out of control.”

International leaders quickly condemned the strike but warned against escalating the conflict further. A UN statement urged both parties “to exercise maximum restraint and to put a stop to the ongoing intensified exchanges of fire. It could ignite a wider conflagration that would engulf the entire region in a catastrophe beyond belief.”

In a rare move, Lebanon’s government issued a statement in response to the 27 July strike, saying the nation “condemns all acts of violence and aggression against civilians and calls for an immediate cessation of hostilities on all fronts.”

In a press interview, Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said that he did not think Hezbollah carried out the attack because it usually hits military targets—not civilian targets. But the minister added that the strike could have been a mistake or missile gone awry during an attack against military targets.

 

For more from Security Management on watching for signs of political instability and preparing for conflict, read these articles from our archive: 

 

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