Syrians in Lebanon mourn children killed in an attack blamed on Israel

“I heard the sound of an attack” and ran toward it, he said.

Jarkas said he found his children Jean (10) and Mohammed (7) “drowned in blood”.

Official Lebanese media reported that five Syrians, including three children, were killed in separate Israeli attacks on Tuesday in southern Lebanon, including on Umm Toot. Hezbollah vowed to fire rockets at Israel in retaliation.

The Iran-backed group has been trading almost daily fire with Israeli forces in support of its ally Hamas since the militant Palestinian group’s attack on Israel on October 7 sparked the war in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military said on Tuesday that its air force had attacked “a Hezbollah terror cell” in the Yarin region near Umm Toot, and released a video of the attack.

On Wednesday, the children’s bodies, apparently wrapped in blankets, were laid out on stretchers as mourners gathered and a sheikh led the funeral prayer.

Another Syrian farm worker in Umm Toot, Mohammed Khalil, 58, said he initially did not know where exactly the strike had taken place.

“We ran to check on the children playing,” he said, his face gaunt and his hair grey.

“We found them dead,” he said, including his 12-year-old son Khalil Khalil.

Around him in Qasimiya in the Tyre district, where the bodies were being taken for burial, people wept, women screamed in grief and some hugged and consoled each other.

“We came as refugees from (Syria) to protect our children,” he said.

“The Israeli government is responsible” for their killing, he added.

The United Nations Children’s Fund UNICEF described the children’s deaths on Tuesday as “horrific”.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned on Wednesday that his fighters would attack new targets in Israel if more civilians were killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon.

According to an AFP count, 511 people have been killed in cross-border violence in Lebanon since October, most of them fighters, but also at least 104 civilians.

On the Israeli side, 17 soldiers and 13 civilians were killed, according to authorities.

The violence is largely confined to the border region and raises fears of a full-scale conflict between the two enemies, who last fought in the summer of 2006.

str-jos-lg/dcp