Everything we know about the Golan Heights football pitch attack that left 12 dead

At least half a dozen children and teenagers have been killed in the deadliest attack on Israel’s northern border since the War in Gaza erupted last October.

Benjamin Netanyahu has sworn that Hezbollah will pay ‘a heavy price’ for the rocket strike on a football field in the Golan Heights, an Israeli-controlled territory nearby neighbouring Lebanon, which also injured a further 20 people. 

It’s understood the Israeli prime minister will now cut short his trip to the United States, convening with his security cabinet on his return.

The Lebanese militant group has meanwhile issued a rare denial of any role in the strike, with the country’s government calling for an end to hostilities on all fronts. 

It is the most severe attack on Israeli civilians since the Hamas terrorist campaign on October 7.

While Israel military efforts have for now been largely focused toward the south, Saturday’s attack on Golan Heights fuels concerns over prospects of the Israel-Hamas war escalating into a full-blown regional conflict. 

As the dust settles from the recent rocket strike, here’s everything you need to know about simmering tensions along Israel’s northern border amid the ongoing War in Gaza to the south. 

What is Hezbollah?

Hezbollah is a Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group in Lebanon. The organisation was set up in 1982 during the Lebanese Civil War and Israel’s concurrent invasion of the country’s south. 

It has historically received significant backing from Iran, and has been described as a Lebanese ‘state within a state’. International attacks on US targets, meanwhile, have seen Washington designate it a terrorist organisation.

With a stated wider goal of eliminating Israel itself, Hezbollah is arguably one of the most powerful and lethal militant groups in the Middle East. It successfully ended Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000, later launching a month-long war in 2006 after capturing two IDF soldiers in an ambush. 

Though a formal ceasefire has remained in place since then, occasional clashes have broken out, which have in turn escalated significantly following the outbreak of the War in Gaza last October.

How does Hezbollah fit into the War in Gaza?

Both Hamas and Hezbollah form part of a network of Iranian-backed governments and militant organisations, known as the ‘Axis of Resistance’. These actors are steadfastly opposed to both Israel and, by extension, its backing from the US and other Western powers. 

While Hezbollah and Iran have both praised the October 7 attacks carried out by Hamas, they have nevertheless officially claimed not to have prior knowledge of the assault and stressed a desire not to see the conflict escalate further. 

That formal position has been severely tested in the months since, as intermittent violence has simmered across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, with intensifying crossfire and rocket strikes in recent weeks.

How did the recent Golan Heights rocket strike unfold?

Saturday’s attack on a football field in the town of Majdal Shams followed after Hezbollah said it had carried out 10 different attacks against Israeli military posts in Golan Heights, and that these had been in response to Israeli airstrikes on villages in southern Lebanon. 

Footage from Israeli TV shows a large blast in one of the valleys near the town, with paramedics using stretchers to rush victims from the football field to ambulances waiting nearby.

Residents have said an airstrike siren was sounded before a rocket hit the area, but that there’d been no time to take shelter beforehand. At least 12 children and teenagers are among the dead, and a further 20 people were injured by the attack. 

While taking responsibility for the other strikes in the days and hours prior, Hezbollah has been uncharacteristically quick to distance itself from the assault on the football field, with a spokesperson saying the group ‘categorically denies carrying out an attack on Majdal Shams.’

How has Israel responded to the rocket strike?

Early on Sunday morning, the IDF said it had carried out airstrikes against seven Hezbollah targets ‘deep inside Lebanese territory’, though it did not report any casualties as a result of the attacks. 

Israel Katz, the Israeli Foreign Minister, has told local press: ‘There is no doubt that Hezbollah has crossed all the red lines here, and the response will reflect that. We are nearing the moment in which we face an all-out war.’

Though the White House was swift to condemn the airstrike against the football field, it has stopped short of blaming the militant group directly, with a spokesperson stating only that ‘our support for Israel’s security is iron-clad and unwavering against all Iranian-backed terrorist groups, including Lebanese Hezbollah.’

What could happen next?

By any measure, the weekend’s events represent a sharp escalation to already stark tensions between Israel and Hezbollah along the border with southern Lebanon. 

Nor is it the first time the War in Gaza has threatened to spill over. Earlier in April, Israel carried out a bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria, to which Iran responded by sending a fleet of several hundred missiles toward Israeli territory.

The retaliation was largely received as a show of force, resulting in only a handful of injuries and minor damage to Israeli air bases, after which Iran told the United Nations that the attacks ‘can be deemed concluded.’

Whether things will now follow a similar track in Golan Heights remains to be seen, with the United Nations issuing a statement urging all parties to ‘exercise maximum constraint’ so as to avoid ‘a wider conflagration that would engulf the entire region in a catastrophe beyond belief.’

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