Israel struck a Gaza school and a rocket hit Israeli-controlled Golan Heights
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The ambulance service in Israel said a rocket that was fired from southern Lebanon killed 11 children and injured 30 other people.
The strike, which was the worst attack on Israeli targets since the beginning of fighting, raised fears of a larger conflagration in the region.
“The Hezbollah terrorist organization is behind the rocket launch at a soccer field in Majdal Shams which caused multiple civilian casualties, including children, earlier this evening,” the statement said.
The Magen David Adom paramedics initially reported that all the people between the ages of 10 and 20 were wounded. Some people who had been playing soccer in Majdal Shams were rushed to ambulances on stretchers.
“These were kids at a soccer field,” Beni Ben Muvchar, head of the local council, told Israeli Channel 12. He called for Israeli leaders to target Hezbollah commanders, saying a red line had been crossed.
The Israeli military said that it was working with the MDA to evacuate the wounded after one projectile crossing from Lebanon toward the area. A video was aired of a blast in one of the valleys.
Over the past weeks, the exchange of fire along the Lebanon-Israel intensified with Israeli airstrikes and rocket and drone attacks by Hezbollah striking deeper and further away from the border.
The airstrike in central Gaza was the latest to shatter a school used to shelter displaced Palestinian residents Saturday morning, killing 30 and wounding more than 100. The Gazan Health Ministry said many of the dead were children.
The school was located in the central Gazan city of Deir al-Balah, where many Palestinians have fled following evacuation orders the Israeli military has issued for regions farther south in Gaza.
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The NPR reporter, Anas Baba, said that there was blood everywhere in the minutes after the strike, as people tried to flee.
Video captured by Baba shows injured kids being carried away in donkey carts and bodies being carried aloft by makeshift stretchers. In nearby hospitals, Baba found hallways lined with bodies, several of them clearly very young children.
The crowded school complex had around 4,000 people sheltering there, and according to Gazan health authorities part of the targeted site was also being used as a field hospital. No warning of the strike was provided in advance to those inside.
More than 2 million people in the Gaza are under an order to leave, according to the United Nations.
A spokesperson for the Israeli military, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said it was the deadliest single attack on an Israeli target since Oct. 7, the date of the Hamas-led attack on Israel that sparked the current war in Gaza.
The incident has prompted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was briefed on the situation while in Washington, D.C., to return to Israel from the U.S. earlier than planned. Upon his return, he will convene a cabinet meeting of his top political allies.
In a statement issued by his office, Netanyahu said the entire nation of Israel embraced the children’s families and “the entire Druze community in its difficult hour, which is also our difficult hour.”
Despite a public message from Hezbollah in which it categorically denied involvement, saying the group had “absolutely nothing to do with the incident,” Netanyahu warned in his office statement that, “the State of Israel will not let this pass in silence. We will not overlook this.”
The speaker of the parliament in Lebanon said that Hezbollah’s denial of its involvement confirmed its commitment to avoiding violence against civilians.
The Lebanese government said the targeting of civilians is a “violation of international law” and that it condemned “all acts of violence and attacks against all civilians.”