Iran is sending mixed signals over deadly rocket attack on Druze village, Israel says Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon is responsible for the attack.
On Saturday, at least twelve children and young people between the ages of ten and twenty were killed in a rocket attack on a football field in the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Israel said Hezbollah carried out the attack and vowed to retaliate. The Shiite militia denied involvement.
“After 10 months of mass slaughter in the Gaza Strip and the slaughter of Palestinian women and children, Israel’s apartheid regime is attempting to mislead public opinion with a falsified scenario to divert the world’s attention from the crimes it is committing on a massive scale in Palestine,” said Nasser Kanaani, spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, according to a statement on the ministry’s website.
“This massacre is a war against humanity and violates all internationally recognized laws and regulations,” Kanaani said, according to ISNA news agency.
However, Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon struck a different tone, downplaying the significance of the attack.
Ambassador Mojtaba Amani wrote on X on Saturday evening that the chance of a larger conflict is “very small” because there is an “imposed balance of power” in the region.
Amani added that Iran does not want or fear escalation with Israel. “Our enemies should imagine what we can do with our power, capacity and defense of resistance,” Amani added without elaborating.
Iran, a sworn enemy of Israel, is the main ally of Hamas-linked Hezbollah, which has been locked in a confrontation with Israel since the start of the Gaza war last October.
