Is Hezbollah behind Majdal Shams strike?
Israel has blamed Lebanon's Hezbollah for a strike that killed 12 young people in Majdal Shams in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.
Hezbollah said it had "no connection" to the incident.
The strike on Majdal Shams, whose population are Arabic-speaking Druze, hit a football pitch and killed children who local authorities said were aged 10 to 16.
Many residents of the Druze town have not accepted Israeli nationality since Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967.
Syria denounced Israel's "false accusations" against Hezbollah and said Israel was looking for "pretexts to enlarge its aggression" and Iran warned Israel that any new military "adventures" in Lebanon could lead to "unforeseen consequences".
Israel accused Hezbollah of firing a Falaq-1 Iranian rocket on Majdal Shams. Hezbollah said it had fired one such rocket on Saturday towards an Israeli military target in the Golan but not on Majdal Shams.
Riad Kahwaji, head of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, said the position Hezbollah said it targeted is about 2.4 kilometers from the town, putting it "within margin of error" of the inaccurate rockets.
But "the possibility of a misfire" from an Israeli air-defense missile could not be ruled out and there should be an independent investigation, he added.
The strike on Majdal Shams came after an Israeli strike killed four Hezbollah fighters in south Lebanon, prompting the militant group to launch retaliatory rocket attacks against the Golan and northern Israel.
The White House said the rocket launch was "conducted by Lebanese Hezbollah", adding that "it was their rocket and launched from an area they control".
The U.N. special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, and U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) chief Aroldo Lazaro said in a joint statement that intensifying exchanges of fire "could ignite a wider conflagration that would engulf the entire region in a catastrophe beyond belief".
Lebanon urged "an immediate cessation of hostilities on all fronts", later calling for an "international investigation" into the strike.
Source: Agence France Presse
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