JERUSALEM/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Nine people were killed in a rocket attack on a football ground in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday, Israeli Channel 13 reported, amid an escalation of fire between Israel and armed groups in Lebanon.
The Israeli emergency service said earlier that nine people were critically wounded by a rocket fired from Lebanon that hit a village football pitch in the Druze village of Majdal Shams. A medic described great destruction and fire at the scene.
The attack on the soccer pitch followed an Israeli strike in Lebanon that killed four militants on Saturday. Two security sources in Lebanon said the four fighters killed in the Israeli strike on Kfarkila in southern Lebanon were members of different armed groups, with at least one of them belonging to Hezbollah.
The Israeli military said its aircraft had targeted a military structure belonging to Hezbollah, after identifying a militant cell entering the building.
Hezbollah claimed at least four attacks, including with Katyusha rockets, in retaliation for the Kfarkila attacks.
However senior Hezbollah media representative Mohammad Afif denied responsibility for the strike on Majdal Shams.
Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel have been trading fire since October, after Hamas’ attack on southern Israel triggered the Gaza war, in their worst escalation since 2006.
(Reporting by Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem, Maya Gebeilly and Laila Bassam in Beirut; Writing by Helen Popper; Editing by Frances Kerry)
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