According to Israel’s army, it was “the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians” since the incident on October 7, which started the Gaza War and led to frequent gunfire across the Lebanese border.
Following the death of twelve youths in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights due to rocket fire from Lebanon, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant pledged on Sunday to “hit the enemy hard” and heightened concerns that the Gaza conflict may escalate.
Any further military “adventures” by Israel in Lebanon, Iran cautioned, might have “unforeseen consequences.” Western nations, such as Britain, Germany, and France, denounced the attack and urged calm.
The European Union demanded an impartial investigation of what transpired.
According to Israel’s army, it was “the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians” since the incident on October 7, which started the Gaza War and led to frequent gunfire across the Lebanese border.
Israel blamed Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement for firing a Falaq-1 Iranian rocket but the Iran-backed group — which has regularly targeted Israeli military positions — said it had “no connection” to the incident.
It said, however, that it had fired one such rocket on Saturday toward an Israeli military target in the Golan.
The rocket fire in Majdal Shams, whose population are Arabic-speaking Druze, prompted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to return early from the United States. Upon arrival he went immediately into a security cabinet meeting, his office said.
He said “Hezbollah will pay a heavy price” for the attack, “a price it has not paid before.”
The Israeli foreign ministry said Hezbollah had “crossed all red lines”.
Israel’s military said later on Sunday it had hit Hezbollah targets “both deep inside Lebanese territory and in southern Lebanon”.
An Israeli drone fired two missiles at Taraiyya village in eastern Lebanon destroying a hangar and a home without causing casualties, a Lebanese security source told AFP.
Hezbollah has said its cross-border fire is an act of support for Palestinian Islamists from Hamas who have been fighting Israel’s military in Gaza since October 7 when they attacked southern Israel.
That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also seized 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 39,324 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, which does not provide details on civilian and militant deaths.
In Gaza’s southern city of Khan Yunis on Sunday, the civil defence agency reported five killed in an Israeli strike that hit several tents housing displaced Palestinians at a humanitarian zone.
The rocket strike on Majdal Shams hit a football pitch and killed young people who local authorities said were aged 10 to 16. Israeli police said an 11-year-old boy was still missing. Thousands of residents crowded the town’s streets in a tearful funeral ceremony for many of the dead.
Early on Sunday, Gallant visited the scene, where a building was pockmarked by shrapnel.
According to Riad Kahwaji, head of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, the position Hezbollah said it targeted is about 2.4 kilometres (1.5 miles) from the town, putting it “within margin of error” of the inaccurate rockets.
But he said “the possibility of a misfire” from an Israeli air defence missile could not be ruled out and there should be an independent investigation into what happened.
United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday said there was “every indication” Hezbollah was behind the rocket strike.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell condemned the “bloodbath” and also said there should be “an independent international investigation into this unacceptable incident.”
The United Nations urged “maximum restraint”, in a joint statement from their special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, and UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) chief Aroldo Lazaro.
Intensifying exchanges of fire “could ignite a wider conflagration that would engulf the entire region in a catastrophe beyond belief,” they said.
Britain condemned the attack, as did Germany, whose foreign ministry urged “cool heads.”
The rocket fire on Majdal Shams came after an Israeli strike killed four Hezbollah fighters in south Lebanon, prompting the militant group to announce a flurry of retaliatory rocket attacks against the Golan and northern Israel.
Lebanon urged “an immediate cessation of hostilities on all fronts”, later calling for an “international investigation” into the strike on Majdal Shams.
Egypt, which has been seeking to broker a Gaza ceasefire deal alongside Qatar, warned against “the dangers of a new war front opening in Lebanon”.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani meanwhile warned that “any ignorant action of the Zionist regime can lead to the broadening of the scope of instability, insecurity and war in the region”.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry called the incident in Majdal Shams a “massacre” and accused Hezbollah of deliberately targeting civilians.