Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on Sunday vowed to “hit the enemy hard” after rocket fire from Lebanon killed 12 young people in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights and again raised fears that the war in Gaza will spread.
Iran warned Israel any new military “adventures” in Lebanon could lead to “unforeseen consequences”. Western powers, including France and Germany, condemned the attack and appealed for calm. The European Union called for an independent probe into what happened. Israel’s army called it “the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians” since the October 7 attack that began the war in Gaza and triggered regular exchanges of fire 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.”
