TEL AVIV, Israel, and GAZA STRIP — A rocket hit a sports complex filled with children playing soccer in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights region Saturday afternoon, on the same day that an Israeli strike in Gaza devastated a school building and killed dozens of people.
The airstrike in central Gaza was the latest to shatter a school used to shelter displaced Palestinian residents Saturday morning, killing 30 and wounding more than 100. The Gazan Health Ministry said many of the dead were children.
The school was located in the central Gazan city of Deir al-Balah, where many Palestinians have fled following evacuation orders the Israeli military has issued for regions farther south in Gaza.
Blood was everywhere in the minutes that followed the strike, with pieces of flesh visible on the stairs and handicapped residents trying to flee, according to NPR reporter Anas Baba, who witnessed the immediate aftermath.
Wounded children were carried away afterward on donkey carts, video captured by Baba showed, with bodies borne aloft by makeshift stretchers built from pieces of debris. In nearby hospitals, Baba found hallways lined with bodies, several of them clearly very young children.
It's the latest strike on a Gaza school turned shelter
The crowded school complex had around 4,000 people sheltering there, and according to Gazan health authorities part of the targeted site was also being used as a field hospital. No warning of the strike was provided in advance to those inside.
The Israeli military said its intelligence indicated that Hamas had been using the school compound as a hiding place for assaults on Israeli units. Numerous steps had been taken, the Israeli military said, to "mitigate the risk of harming civilians."
The Israeli military has issued similar statements in recent weeks following several strikes on schools used to house the displaced in the Gaza Strip.
Earlier Saturday, Israel had issued fresh evacuation orders in southern Gaza, including neighborhoods in Khan Younis and Rafah, as the Israeli military said it was preparing to respond to rocket fire into Israel perpetrated by Hamas.
The United Nations currently estimates more than 80% of Gaza's residents — more than 2 million people — are under similar evacuation orders across the territory.
A deadly rocket was fired from across the border in Lebanon
Later Saturday, the Israeli ambulance service said a rocket launched from southern Lebanon killed 11 children, with around 30 injured, several of those very seriously.
Israel says Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Lebanese militia, launched around 40 rockets from southern Lebanon toward northern Israel Saturday, with most of them intercepted and shot down.
The Israeli military says the rocket was launched from a village in southern Lebanon called Chebaa, and apportioned blame for the deaths to Hezbollah. The group, which is designated a terrorist organization by the United States, has denied responsibility.
A spokesperson for the Israeli military, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said it was the deadliest single attack on an Israeli target since Oct. 7, the date of the Hamas-led attack on Israel that sparked the current war in Gaza.
The incident has prompted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was briefed on the situation while in Washington, D.C., to return to Israel from the U.S. earlier than planned. He will convene a cabinet meeting of his top political allies and security officials upon his return.
The rocket landed in the city of Majdal Shams, in the disputed Golan Heights that Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 war and claims as its own.
Many local residents there belong to the Druze community — an Arab minority group, some of whom have been granted Israeli citizenship.
The strike near Lebanon's border risks a wider conflagration
In a statement issued by his office, Netanyahu said the entire nation of Israel embraced the children's families and "the entire Druze community in its difficult hour, which is also our difficult hour."
After months of skirmishes, alongside artillery, airstrikes and rocket attacks that have been traded back and forth across Israel's border with Lebanon, many analysts and regional leaders have expressed concerns about a significant military escalation between Hezbollah and the Israel military.
And this incident marks by far the highest number of civilian casualties since the simmering conflict started back in October.
Despite a public message from Hezbollah in which it categorically denied involvement, saying the group had “absolutely nothing to do with the incident," Netanyahu warned in his office statement that, "the State of Israel will not let this pass in silence. We will not overlook this."
The Lebanese parliamentary speaker said Hezbollah's denial of its involvement confirmed its commitment to avoiding violence against civilians, and proved Lebanon was not responsible.
The Lebanese government said the targeting of civilians is a "violation of international law" and that it condemned "all acts of violence and attacks against all civilians."
Willem Marx wrote from London; Kat Lonsdorf reported from Tel Aviv; Anas Baba reported from Gaza.
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