Jerusalem – The Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah rained rockets into Israel on Saturday, with at least one hitting a soccer field where children were playing in the northern Israeli town of Majdal Shams, near the Syrian border. At least 12 people are reported to have been killed and a further 29 injured, most of them reportedly between the ages of 10 and 20.
The Druze-majority town’s football field saw the north’s worst outbreak of violence and deadly attacks since Hezbollah entered the war on October 7, replacing the terrorist group Hamas.
In a statement released shortly after the attack, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) made it clear that Hezbollah was responsible for the attack: “According to the IDF’s assessment of the situation and the information in our possession, the rocket launch at Majdal Shams was carried out by the Hezbollah terrorist organization. The Hezbollah terrorist organization is behind the rocket launch that this evening caused numerous civilian casualties, including children, at the soccer field in Majdal Shams.”
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Israeli security forces and medics evacuate wounded and local residents at the site of an alleged Lebanese attack in the Israeli village of Majdal Shams on July 27, 2024. (Jalaa MAREY/AFP) (Jalaa MAREY/AFP via Getty Images) (ALAA MAREY/AFP via Getty Images)
Political sources said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was still in the United States when the attack occurred, received an update and assessed the situation.
Citing the prime minister’s office, the TPS news agency reported that Netanyahu met with the spiritual leader of Israel’s 152,000 Druze sect and “made it clear that Israel will not tolerate this murderous attack and that Hezbollah will pay a heavy price that it has not paid so far.”
In the same TPS report, the agency quoted Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Moafeq Tarif as calling the attack “brutal and murderous.”
Netanyahu is due to meet with his security cabinet ministers soon after returning to Israel from a visit to the United States on Sunday.
The site of the Hezbollah rocket attack on a soccer field in the Druze village of Majdal Shams, Israel, on July 28, 2024. The attack killed 12 people and injured more than 30, most of the victims being between the ages of 10 and 20. (Erez Ben Simon/TPS-IL)
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant was assessing the attack alongside IDF Chief of Staff Helgi Halevi.
The Israel Defense Forces said it had detected about 30 missiles flying into Israel from Lebanon on Saturday. Hezbollah, designated a terrorist organization by the United States, has de facto control over Lebanon.
Israeli security forces and medical personnel evacuate wounded from the site of an alleged attack from Lebanon in the Israeli village of Majdal Shams on July 27, 2024. (JALAA MAREY/AFP via Getty Images)
“We are approaching the moment of all-out war with Hezbollah in the north and we will respond in a disproportionate way,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz was quoted as saying by Israeli Channel 12 on a television news program. Translation notes about X By Israeli journalists Ben Kaspit and Daphna Liel.
Earlier this month, Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke to Fox News Digital about the possibility of an imminent all-out war between the Jewish state and the Lebanon-based terrorist organization Hezbollah.
On Saturday evening, the Biden administration released a statement condemning the attack: “We condemn this horrific attack that reportedly killed teenagers and children playing soccer Saturday evening in the village of Majdal Shams in northern Israel. We offer our heartfelt condolences to the families of those who lost loved ones today and pray for a speedy recovery for those injured. Israel continues to face serious threats to its security, as the world saw today. The United States will continue to support efforts to end these horrific attacks along the Blue Line. This must be a top priority. Our support for Israel’s security is ironclad and unwavering against all Iranian-backed terrorist organizations, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah.”
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Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah delivered a televised address at the annual Quds (Jerusalem) Day commemoration rally in the southern outskirts of Beirut on April 5, 2024. (Anwar Amro/AFP via Getty Images)
“Hezbollah’s secretary-general [Hassan Nasrallah]Nasrallah had warned in July that he would strike “new targets” in Israel. This type of attack on Majdal Shams is likely what he had in mind, especially since it is outside population centers like Tel Aviv, would be almost certain to provoke a decisive response, and is a Druze town. Nasrallah may have thought that Hezbollah could get away with it.”
Israel’s Druze community resides in numerous villages across northern Israel. They have existed in the region for at least a millennium, and communities are also found in parts of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
People stand near a damaged bicycle at the site of an alleged attack from Lebanon in the Israeli village of Majdal Shams on July 27, 2024. (Photo by JALAA MAREY/AFP via Getty Images)
Brodsky, policy director at the Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, continued, “But this may prove to be a miscalculation on Hezbollah’s part, as an attack of this kind could change the dynamics of the conflict in the north with its large number of civilian casualties, including children. How has it come to this? It is a weakening of deterrence. Hezbollah has been under the impression that the US would restrain Israeli operations in Lebanon. A US policy focus on de-escalation will lead to the very tensions they want to avoid.”
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Israel has fought two wars with Hezbollah, in 1982 and 2006. The IDF estimates that it has killed 500 terrorists in Lebanon since the start of the war with Hamas, and that around 5,000 artillery shells have been fired into Israel.
Fox News’ Ruth Marks Eglash contributed to this report.
