Israel says Hezbollah will ‘pay the price’ after blaming it for attack on soccer field that killed 12 children

Israel vowed Hezbollah will “pay the price” after blaming the Lebanese militant group for a rocket attack in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that killed 12 children, touching off fears once again that an all-out war would envelop the region.

Hezbollah says it “firmly denies” it was behind the strike, 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, according to a statement from the military on Sunday morning. It was not immediately clear whether there were any casualties from those strikes.

And 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.

“Hezbollah is responsible for this and they will pay the price,” Gallant said. In an earlier statement from his office, he added: “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 and residents who spoke to CNN. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday 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. Considered occupied territory under international law and UN Security Council resolutions, 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 honouring the victims of the strike. People dressed in black sang as white coffins were carried to a funeral home, with others carrying flower wreaths.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid spoke at the funeral, saying “the children who died on that football field could have been any of our children. Therefore, they are indeed the children of each of us. These are our children.”

But a number of residents berated far-right Israeli minister Bezalel Smotrich at the event, crowding the finance minister and demanding he leave. Smotrich was eventually ushered away by security.

Fears of wider war spread

Israel and Hezbollah have been trading rocket fire on a near-daily basis since Hamas’ attacks on Israel on October 7, and those exchanges have become increasingly volatile, sparking fears on several occasions that Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza would spiral into a conflict on multiple fronts across the Middle East.

While Hezbollah admitted striking the Golan Heights on Saturday, it rejected responsibility for the attack on Majdal Shams.

“We confirm that the Islamic Resistance has no connection to the incident whatsoever and firmly denies all false claims in this regard,” a statement read.

Analysing footage of the explosion and the aftermath, experts told CNN the blast and damage were consistent with the types of munitions fired at northern Israel and the Golan Heights from Lebanon and Syria.

Trevor Ball, a former US Army explosive ordnance disposal technician, told CNN Sunday that weapon fragments at the scene indicated the rocket was fired by Hezbollah or another militant group. Ball said that based on the available evidence, he ruled out the possibility of the blast having been caused by an Israeli interceptor missile, such as those fired by the Iron Dome air defense system.

A Western official familiar with the intelligence told CNN there was no doubt the strike was done by Hezbollah, but it was not believed to be intentional. The expectation is that Israel will respond but has no desire to escalate to a broader conflict, the official said, adding that Hezbollah knows the response is coming and will hopefully be rational in its own response.

Hezbollah’s head of media relations unit, Mohammad Afif, told CNN on Sunday the militant group was in a “state of mobilization,” and had vacated some military posts after the escalation in threats from Israel. He did not provide further details on the location or the number of the positions involved.

“The state of mobilization and preparedness, and the vacating some of the military positions here and there is a normal part of the war, especially since the escalation in Israeli threats since yesterday,” he said. Afif described the confrontations between Israel and Hezbollah which began on October 8 as a “state of war.”

Israel’s initial overnight response appeared to stop short of the kind of attack that would launch an all-out war, but it gave rise to an incredibly tense day in the region.

Iran on Sunday warned Israel against “any new adventures” aimed at Lebanon, in a statement issued by foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani. The statement said Israel “does not have the minimum moral authority to comment and judge about the incident that happened in Majdal Shams area, and the claims of this regime against others will not be heard either.”

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cut short by several hours his visit to the United States and returned to Israel to convene a meeting of the security cabinet in Tel Aviv to discuss the situation. His office said following the meeting that the cabinet had “authorized the prime minister and the minister of defense to decide on the nature of the response against the terror organization Hezbollah, and on its’ timing.”

The prime minister said earlier that he was “shocked” by the attack. “I can say that the State of Israel will not be silent about this. We will not put this off the agenda,” he said.

‘It won’t be Hezbollah alone’: Lebanese FM

The Lebanese foreign minister warned that if Israel responded by invading Lebanon it risked dragging the whole region into war.

“[A] war against Lebanon is a regional war,” caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib told CNN’s Senior International Correspondent Ben Wedeman Sunday in Beirut. “It’s not going to be Hezbollah against Israel…You have the Houthis, you have the Iraqi militias, you have militias in Syria who are not Syrians: Pakistani, Afghan militias. They’re all going to get involved in that.”

He said in the case of a war, Lebanon would not get involved but would stand behind Hezbollah.

“If there is a war, we’re supporting Hezbollah, definitely,” Bou Habib said. “Not because of conviction but because of any attack on our country, we support Hezbollah in this regard.”

A war between Lebanon and Israel in 2006 devastated much of Lebanon, yet Hezbollah foiled Israel’s ultimate plan to dismantle the group. Throughout the 34-day war, Hezbollah is estimated to have fired around 4,000 rockets – a daily average of 117.

Bou Habib stressed that another war would not only be detrimental to Lebanon, but to Israel as well.

“[Israel] will return to the stone ages as well, it’s not by the Lebanese government,” he said, referring to comments by Israel’s Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant back in June 2023, in which he said the Israeli military could send Lebanon “back to the Stone Age.”

However, Bou Habib told the Lebanese Al Jadeed News TV channel that Lebanon had received reassurances from third countries that Israel’s response would be “limited.” He added that Hezbollah would in turn limit its actions. Pressed by the anchor to identify the countries that had offered this reassurance, he hinted that the “US and France are very concerned about the issue.”

Lebanon has called for an international investigation into the attack to determine who was responsible.

Egypt’s foreign minister on Sunday warned “of the dangers of opening a new war front in Lebanon.” It called on “influential forces in the international community to intervene immediately” to prevent a drawn-out conflict.

The spokesperson for United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said he called on “all parties to exercise maximum restraint and reiterates once again his consistent call on all concerned to avoid any further escalation,” according to the spokesperson.

Meanwhile, the Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport announced several cancelations of flights to the Lebanese capital on its website early Monday local time. The canceled flights were scheduled to depart the cities of Athens, Stockholm, Dusseldorf, Addis Ababa, Ankara, Antalya, and Adana on Monday.

Earlier Sunday, Lebanon’s Middle East Airlines (MEA) announced it had delayed six of its return flights to Beirut until Monday.

The flights will be departing London, Copenhagen, Doha, Dammam, Dubai and Jeddah Monday morning, MEA said in a statement that did not specify a reason for the delays.

Questions over alert system

In the wake of the strike, some residents of Majdal Shams have questioned whether the area’s early warning system was working properly.

An eyewitness to the strike on the soccer field told CNN’s Jeremy Diamond that the rocket hit less than five seconds after the sirens sounded.

Majdal Shams resident Taymor Wili said he was in his apartment overlooking the soccer field when the rocket hit. He said there was no time for the children on the field to react between the first alert siren and the moment of impact.

He also said the safety shelter was only yards from the soccer field and if those on the field had had more time, they likely could have made it to the shelter. Video of the safety shelter shows it yards away from the crater made by the rocket’s impact.

In addition to the eyewitness testimony, in several videos from Majdal Shams, sirens can be heard for several seconds before the rocket hits.

In a response to a question from CNN, the IDF said a preliminary examination showed the alert system was working properly before the rocket hit. “The time for sheltering in this area is immediate,” the IDF said.

It added that the IDF “makes all feasible efforts to provide the public with the required warning time as part of the effort to save lives.”

The IDF said it sends “condolences to the families and will continue to work in order to make life-saving alerts accessible.”

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the number of Israeli Jewish settlers in the Golan Heights.

CNN’s Alireza Hajjihosseini, Ivana Kottasová, Eyad Kourdi, Lauren Izso, Abeer Salman and Andrew Raine contributed reporting

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