Rocket kills 12 in occupied Golan amid Israel-Hezbollah flare-up

A rocket allegedly fired from Lebanon hit a football pitch in an Arab town in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights Saturday, killing at least 12 youngsters. The Iran-backed militant Hezbollah group has denied any responsibility.

The Israeli army claimed Hezbollah fired the deadly rocket that killed the youngsters aged between 10 and 20 years when they were hit on the pitch in the Druze town of Majdal Shams.

Many residents of the town retain Syrian nationality decades after the territory's occupation in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

The rocket fire came after an Israeli strike killed four Hezbollah fighters in south Lebanon prompting the Iran-backed militant group to announce a flurry of retaliatory rocket attacks against the Golan and northern Israel.

Military spokesman Daniel Hagari said on X that the youngsters were killed in the attack, while the emergency service Magen David Adom said 19 others were wounded when the rocket hit Majdal Shams.

"We will prepare for a response against Hezbollah... we will act," Rear Admiral Hagari said in a video statement, adding the rocket fire was the "deadliest attack on Israeli civilians since October 7" when the Palestinian Hamas group led an attack in southern Israel, sparking the war on Gaza.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said he had decided to return to Israel "as quickly as possible" from a visit to the United States, where he met President Joe Biden earlier this week.

Hezbollah completely denied it was responsible for the deadly strike.

"The Islamic Resistance has no connection to this incident," it said, referring to its military wing.

The Lebanese government condemned "all acts of violence and aggression against civilians."

"Targeting civilians is a flagrant violation of international law and goes against the principles of humanity," a government statement said, calling "for an immediate cessation of hostilities".

Israel's police and the army claimed the rocket fired at Majdal Shams was part of a barrage of rockets fired from Lebanon which struck multiple locations in the Golan.

Ambulances, helicopters and mobile intensive care units were deployed to the scene, the army said.

"We arrived at a football pitch and saw destruction and objects on fire. Injured people were lying on the grass," paramedic Idan Avshalom said in a statement issued by Magen David Adom.

An AFP correspondent saw medics carrying away the wounded for treatment.

"Officers and police bomb disposal experts from the northern district police are currently securing the area and searching for additional (rocket) remnants to eliminate any further risk to the public," the police said in a separate statement.

The rocket fire came after a Lebanese security source said an Israeli strike killed four Hezbollah fighters in the southern village of Kfar Kila.

Hezbollah, which has exchanged near-daily cross-border fire with the Israeli army since the Gaza war erupted last October, confirmed the deaths of four of its fighters.

It said it carried out a dozen retaliatory attacks on Israeli targets, nine in the space of two hours.

The violence since October has killed at least 527 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally. Most of those killed have been fighters, but they have included at least 104 civilians, among them children, medics and journalists.

On the Israeli side, 18 soldiers and 24 civilians have been killed, according to Israeli authorities. Hezbollah believes the number to be higher.

The war in Gaza broke out after Hamas' October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people in Israel, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Hamas says the attack came in response to decades of Israeli occupation and aggression against the Palestinian people.

Israel's relentless military campaign in Gaza has killed over 39,200 people, according to the territory's health ministry, and has displaced most residents there. The bombardment has reduced much of the enclave to rubble, rendering it uninhabitable.

States around the world have accused Israel of committing genocide.