Region on Edge: Israel Accuses Hezbollah of Mass Killing

12 people including children were killed in a rocket attack on a football field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday. Hezbollah took responsibility and said Israel would suffer severe consequences for targeting Lebanon Meanwhile, Israeli officials accused the Iran-backed Lebanese group and shifted to a dangerous cycle of retaliation.

Hezbollah dismissed any involvement with the operation which was the killing of at least 19 people in Israeli territory, the highest casualty in the region since the conflict in Gaza. Such actions have provoked more concerns of a full-fledged war between the two highly armed hostile sides.

The rocket struck a football pitch in Majdal Shams, a Druze village in the Golan Heights still occupied by Israel after the silver stone cup war in 1967, and further claimed international recognition.

“Hezbollah will pay a heavy price, the kind it has thus far not paid,” Netanyahu said in a conversation to one of the senior Druze men in Israel.

Hezbollah later came out and flatly denied any involvement in the attack. The Israeli ambulance service said that 13 of them were also injured by the rocket, which attacked the crowded pitch. Mourhaf Abu Saleh, one of the eyewitnesses to the tragedy, stated that the children could not get to the shelters before the aggression was launched.

The police and other first responders met rubble and partial demolition when they got there. “I saw the casualties on the grass and that was so sad,” said a medic identified as Idan Avshalom. Netanyahu already back from the United States said that upon his arrival, he would be gathering his security cabinet.

America considered the attack to be unjustified and restated its support to Israel in its fight against Iranian-supported terrorists such as the Hezbollah group. Moscow also condemned the attack that took place.

The Israeli military described the missile as an Iranian-made Falaq-1, fired from close to Chebaa in southern Lebanon. Nevertheless, the attack had its proportions, and the representative of the Israel Defense Forces, the military rear admiral Daniel Hagari, stated that there could be no question of an increase in hostilities at the moment.

The violence has created a large number of internally displaced persons both in Lebanon and Israel; the Israeli air strikes have killed approximately 350 Hezbollah operatives and over a hundred Lebanese civilians. The international peacekeepers are trying to calm the situation.