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Israel launched airstrikes at Hezbollah targets in Lebanon overnight in retaliation for Saturday’s rocket attack on a football pitch in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, increasing fears of a broader conflict in the region.
The targets were “deep inside” Lebanon and included “weapons caches and military infrastructure,” according to an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) readout on Sunday.
Hezbollah denied that it was responsible for the attack on Saturday, which killed at least 11 people, many of them children. The IDF refuted that and accused the Iran-backed militant group of conducting the strike, vowing a response.
“This is a Hezbollah rocket. And whoever launches such a rocket into a built-up area wants to kill civilians, wants to kill children,” Herzi Halevi, IDF’s chief of staff, said during a visit to the football pitch.
The Golan Heights strike was the deadliest in Israel or Israeli-annexed territory since the start of the conflict in the Gaza Strip last October. Hezbollah and Israel have been trading fire in areas along the Lebanon-Israel border, but the rocket attack and retaliatory airstrikes heightened fears of an escalation into a broader conflict.
The United Nations called on Israel and Hezbollah to show “maximum restraint” in a statement after Saturday’s attack. “It could ignite a wider conflagration that would engulf the entire region in a catastrophe beyond belief,” the U.N. said in a statement.
In a post on X, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said “Hezbollah will pay a heavy price for this that it has not paid to this point.”
Netanyahu was in the United States during the rocket attack on a trip to woo presidential candidate Donald Trump and secure a pledge of unequivocal support for Israel militarily and financially should he win the U.S. election in November. The Israeli leader cut his trip short and is expected to return home on Sunday, the New York Times reported.
