{"id":5032,"date":"2024-07-28T23:48:58","date_gmt":"2024-07-28T23:48:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/restore\/?p=5032"},"modified":"2024-07-28T23:48:58","modified_gmt":"2024-07-28T23:48:58","slug":"golan-heights-strike-thousands-mourn-death-of-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/golan-heights-strike-thousands-mourn-death-of-children\/","title":{"rendered":"Golan Heights Strike: Thousands Mourn Death of Children"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thousands of people gathered in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Sunday for the funerals of children and teenagers killed in a rocket attack, as world leaders tried to contain the political fallout from the attack.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Members of the Druze community wept as they carried coffins through Majdal Shams, while some shouted angrily at government ministers, Israeli media reported.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Israel has blamed the attack on the Iran-backed Hezbollah. The White House also accused the group for the strike which killed 12 people. Hezbollah has denied responsibility for the attack.<\/span><\/p>\n

World leaders condemned the attack on Sunday and moved to ease tensions, fearing it could trigger a war between Israel and Hezbollah.<\/span><\/p>\n

In response to Saturday’s attack, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) overnight targeted Hezbollah\u00a0 in Lebanese territory, and Hezbollah struck two Israeli military bases on Sunday.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The cross-border firefight between the two sides has escalated since Hezbollah fired rockets at Israeli targets a day after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. The Hamas attack triggered Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Hezbollah says it is acting in support of the Palestinians.<\/span><\/p>\n

Saturday’s attack was the deadliest\u00a0 in and around Israel’s northern border since October.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The strike hit a soccer field in Majdal Shams, one of four towns in the Golan Heights, home to about 25,000\u00a0 Arabic-speaking Druze religious and ethnic groups.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said 10 of the 12 victims were between\u00a0 10 and 16 years old, but we’re silent on the ages of the other two victims.<\/span><\/p>\n

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who vowed that Hezbollah would pay a “heavy price,” arrived in Israel on Sunday after cutting short a trip to the United States. He planned to meet with his military leaders to assess the situation and approve plans of action.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hezbollah denied involvement in the attack but had claimed responsibility for four other attacks earlier on Saturday, including one on a military base about 3 kilometers away.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ten white-covered coffins were carried through crowded streets by weeping men wearing traditional red-tipped white hats at a funeral in Majdal Shams on Sunday,\u00a0 AFP reported. Women dressed in black abayas wept as they placed flowers on coffins. Some mourners carried large photographs of the dead children.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fadi Mahmud, 48, told AFP that Majdal Shams experienced such casualties for the first time during the war.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Our community is very close-knit. These children are like the children of everybody in the village,” he was reported as saying.<\/span><\/p>\n

Community anger also boiled over at the funeral, with some directing their anger at Israeli government officials in attendance, the Times of Israel reported.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNow you come here? Ten months you didn\u2019t come!\u201d a man dressed in a military uniform reportedly shouted at Housing Minister Nir Barkat and Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman.His comments received applause.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re tired of your promises!\u201d another person reportedly yelled at Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a video posted on social media, the hecklers surrounded Smotrich, cursing and saying “we don’t want him!”, according to the Times of Israel translation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Israeli media reported that the leader of the Druze community requested in a letter that government ministers not attend the funeral to prevent the tragedy from becoming a “political event”.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Druze are part of an Arabic-speaking ethnic group located in Lebanon, Syria, the Golan Heights and northern Israel. In Israel, they have full citizenship rights and make up about 1.5 percent of the population.<\/span><\/p>\n

But most Golan residents maintained allegiance to Syria. They can still study and work in Israel, but only those with citizenship can vote and serve in the military.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s annexation of Syria’s Golan in 1981 is not recognized by most of the international community.<\/span><\/p>\n

World leaders on Sunday condemned the strike and warned of escalation, although they disagreed on who was responsible.<\/span><\/p>\n

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said in a message on X that the UK \u201ccondemns the strike in Golan Heights that has tragically claimed at least 12 lives\u201d and that Hezbollah “must cease their attacks”.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are deeply concerned about the risk of further escalation and destabilization,\u201d said Secretary Lammy.<\/span><\/p>\n

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington supports Israel’s right to defend itself, adding that “we also don’t want to see the conflict escalate”.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bouhabib told the BBC he did not believe Hezbollah carried out the attack, but added that “it could be a mistake by the Israelis or by Hezbollah – I don’t know.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In a statement, the Lebanese government condemned the violence and called\u00a0 for a ceasefire on all fronts.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source: BBC News\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thousands of people gathered in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Sunday for the funerals of children…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":5033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[372],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/136"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}