Druze town buries 12th victim of Golan Heights rocket fire
Hundreds gathered Monday in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights town of Majdal Shams for the funeral of the last of 12 youths killed by rocket fire.
Eleven-year-old Guevara Ibrahim was initially reported missing after Saturday's strike that hit a football pitch in the Druze Arab town, but has later been confirmed dead.
The 11 others killed in the attack, blamed by Israel and the U.S. on Lebanon's Hezbollah, were all aged 10 to 16 and laid to rest in ceremonies on Sunday.
An AFP photographer in Majdal Shams said more than 1,000 people, mostly members of the Druze community, had arrived for Ibrahim's funeral on Monday.
The Israeli military called the rocket strike "the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians" since the October 7 attack by Palestinian militants that triggered the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.
Many residents of Majdal Shams however have not accepted Israeli nationality since Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967.
Following the conquest of about two-thirds of the Golan plateau during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Israel in 1981 annexed the area in a move not recognized by the international community, with the exception of the United States since 2019.
The Golan Druze largely identify as Syrian while having resident status, rather than citizenship, in Israel.
According to the Israeli military, Majdal Shams was hit Saturday with an Iranian-made rocket carrying a 50-kilogram warhead.
Hezbollah, which has traded regular cross-border fire with Israeli forces since the Gaza war began in early October, has denied responsibility for the strike, though it claimed multiple attacks on Israeli military positions that day.
Hezbollah says its actions against Israeli forces are in support of Palestinians in Gaza and its ally, militant group Hamas.
The violence on the Israel-Lebanon border has killed at least 527 people on the Lebanese side, according to an AFP tally.
Most of the dead have been fighters, but the toll includes at least 104 civilians.
On the Israeli side, including on the annexed Golan Heights, 22 soldiers and 24 civilians have been killed according to Israel's army.
30 July 2024, 03:58
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Sputnik: Veteran War Correspondent: Blast In Golan Heights Not From Hezbollah Rocket Magnier argued that a faulty Israeli air defense missile was a more likely culprit in the Golan Heights explosion.
“I can say that there are malfunctioning missiles and there are malfunctioning rockets that can fall anywhere and these incidents are very frequent, in particular with the Israeli interception missiles, where they say that only 60 to 65% reach their target and the others miss,” he said. “A strong possibility… an Israeli interception missile of the type Tamir… they carry around 10 to 15 kilograms of explosive and they have a very similar impact to what we’ve seen in the pictures provided on the ground by the people of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights.”
30 July 2024, 03:59
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Magnier noted that the size of the crater matched what the Tamir could create and that there was still grass from the field around the crater, which would not happen with a larger Falaq rocket.
“Everything there indicates that we’re talking about a small-sized missile [and] not a big sized rocket of 50 kilograms.”
30 July 2024, 03:58
00
Magnier noted that the size of the crater matched what the Tamir could create and that there was still grass from the field around the crater, which would not happen with a larger Falaq rocket.
“Everything there indicates that we’re talking about a small-sized missile [and] not a big sized rocket of 50 kilograms.”
