Israeli minister demands “Lebanon should burn” after alleged Hezbollah attack

Israeli Energy and Infrastructure Minister Eli Cohen warned in a social media post that “Lebanon should burn” after children and teenagers were killed on Saturday in an attack suspected of being carried out by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Hezbollah has denied involvement in an alleged rocket attack on a soccer field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that Israeli emergency services said killed 10 people, including minors.

The attack, which came amid escalating violence on the Israel-Lebanon border and the war raging in the Gaza Strip, was first reported by local media on Saturday. It was later confirmed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which said those killed were aged between 10 and 20 and 20 others were injured.

“Lebanon should burn,” Cohen wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “We must take significant action in the north that will exact a heavy price on Lebanon and Hezbollah. What cruel terrorist organization shoots children at play?”

He added: “We send our condolences to the families of those killed in Majdal Shams, to our Druze brothers who lost their loved ones today.”

In a statement issued with Newsweek Israel Defense Forces spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari called it “the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians since October 7,” when a Hamas-led attack on Israel killed around 1,200 people, the majority of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities.

After an “assessment of the situation and the intelligence information available to us,” the Israeli military stated that “the rocket launch at Majdal Shams was carried out by the terrorist organization Hezbollah.”

“The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon categorically rejects the allegations made by some ‘Israeli’ media and various media platforms about its involvement in attacks on Majdal Shams,” a Hezbollah spokesman said in a statement issued with Newsweek“The Islamic Resistance has absolutely nothing to do with the incident and denies all false allegations in this context.”

Newsweek has asked the US State Department for comment.

The United States is advising Israel against expanding its ongoing war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

However, tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have increased since the Gaza War broke out following the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. In response, Israel launched a major offensive on Gaza that left more than 39,000 Palestinians dead, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, according to the Associated Press.

Hezbollah, which has long positioned itself as a champion of the Palestinians, has regularly fought off rocket attacks with Israel since the beginning of the Gaza war.

According to AP, around 450 people have been killed in Lebanon as a result of the ongoing conflict. Most of them were Hezbollah fighters, but around 90 civilians and non-combatants were also killed. In Israel, 44 people were killed in the cross-border exchange, about half of them Israeli soldiers, AP reported.

Update, 7/27/24, 3:21 p.m. ET: This article was originally published as a breaking news story and has been updated with additional information. The headline has also been changed.