Thousands of Druze mourn youth killed in rocket attack on Golan Heights

Thousands of Druze men and women, many dressed in black, gathered on Sunday for the funeral of several of the 12 teenagers killed the day before in a rocket attack on the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.

The Israeli military said it was hit by an Iranian-made missile with a 50-kilogram warhead fired by the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah group at a soccer field in the Druze Arab town of Majdal Shams.

Hezbollah has denied responsibility for the attack.

Local authorities said the dead were between 10 and 16 years old.

The Druze are an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Early Sunday morning, Druze women gathered around the coffins covered with white shrouds before the funeral.

Several women in black abayas wept as they placed flowers on the coffins, an AFP correspondent reported.

Many held pink flowers in their hands, while hundreds of men dressed in traditional Druze dress, including white caps decorated with red, attended the ceremonies.

“Every night, every day, every minute we are worried. It has been like this for 10 months now,” Laith, a 42-year-old nurse who gave only his first name, told AFP.

“Everyone you see here is constantly worried,” he said. “We are so sad. We lost children, children who were playing football.”

Under the scorching sun, religious leaders led hundreds of people in a prayer meeting at a local town hall while the entire city was in a standstill.

Shops closed and checkpoints were set up at the entrances to all villages in the Golan.

The Israeli army described Saturday’s rocket attack as “the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians” since Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7 that sparked the war in the Gaza Strip.

In Majdal Shams, many residents have not accepted Israeli citizenship since Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967.

According to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures, 1,197 people were killed in the attack on October 7, most of them civilians.

According to the Health Ministry of the Hamas-controlled area, 39,324 people have died as a result of Israel’s military retaliation in the Gaza Strip. The ministry has not provided any information on the number of civilians and insurgents killed.

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