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The Israeli army on Sunday said it is preparing to step up fighting on its northern border, threatening deeper attacks and all-out war with Lebanon after a strike on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights killed 12 children on Saturday.
The attack, which struck a football field in the Druze town of Majdal Shams, is the deadliest to hit Israel since the Hamas attack on October 7.
“We are greatly increasing our readiness for the next stage of fighting in the north. We know how to attack even very far from the State of Israel … there will be more challenges,” army chief Herzi Halevi said in a video statement from the scene of the attack.
Syria said the Israeli army was responsible for the incident.
Israel committed a “heinous crime … with the intention of escalating the situation in the region,” the Syrian Foreign Ministry said through the Sana state news agency, adding that Israel blamed Hezbollah as a pretext to expand its attacks on Lebanon.
Damascus “condemns the continued perpetration of massacres by the Israeli occupation entity, one after the other, and denounces its blatant attempts to fabricate pretexts to expand the scope of its aggression,” the ministry said.
“Our people in the occupied Syrian Golan, who have refused for decades of Israeli occupation to give up their Syrian Arab identity, will not be fooled by the occupation’s lies and false accusations that the Lebanese national resistance bombed Majdal Shams.”
The town, seized by Israel in 1967, is internationally recognised as part of the Syrian Golan Heights.
The army accused Hezbollah of firing an Iranian-made Falaq rocket at the town. The militant group has denied any involvement in the attack.
Tensions were already high on the northern border, where Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged daily cross-border fire since October 8, with Israel repeatedly alluding to full-scale war with Lebanon in the coming months.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will convene a meeting of the war cabinet on Sunday afternoon, returning early from a trip to the US.
“Israel cannot let this pass in silence. We will not overlook this,” he said in a statement before his return to Israel.
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant also visited the site of the attack on Sunday, saying Hezbollah will “pay the price” for what he described as an awful tragedy.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah should “pay with his head” and that “Lebanon as a whole has to pay the price”.
His comments were echoed by Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, who said Hezbollah has crossed “all red lines” and faces “all-out war.”
Ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein said Hezbollah was “unequivocally responsible” for the attack.
“The only way that the world can prevent a full-scale war which would be devastating also to Lebanon is by forcing Hezbollah to implement Security Council Resolution 1701. Now is the very last minute to do so diplomatically,” he wrote on X.
Eleven of the 12 people killed have been named by Israeli media.
All were aged 16 or under, and several were relatives of the Abu Saleh family.
At least 40 people were injured and are receiving medical treatment at hospitals in Safed and the city of Haifa.
Several children are in serious condition and suffered “multi-system injuries from shrapnel,” Salman Zarka, director of Safed's Ziv Medical Centre told Israel's Channel 12.
Iran's foreign ministry has said any Israeli attack on Lebanon will be met with a “decisive response across the entire axis of resistance.”
“I repeat, a firm and united response, make no mistake,” spokesman Nasser Kanaani said in a Sunday statement.
Located at the foot of Mount Hermon, Majdal Shams lies right on the border with Syria.
Most residents are Druze and choose not to hold Israeli citizenship.
Druze who do hold Israeli citizenship serve in the Israeli army, and several have been killed in fighting in Gaza.
UN call for restraint
The UN's mission in Lebanon and the UN peacekeeping force along the border, Unifil, made a joint statement on Saturday evening, saying they deplored “the death of civilians – young children and teenagers – in Majdal Shams. Civilians must be protected at all times.
“We urge the parties to exercise maximum restraint and to put a stop to the ongoing intensified exchanges of fire. It could ignite a wider conflagration that would engulf the entire region in a catastrophe beyond belief,” they said.
Tor Wennesland, the UN's Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, issued a separate comment on the escalation.
“The Middle East is on the brink; the world and the region cannot afford another open conflict,” he wrote on X.
