Thousands of Druze mourners in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights attended a funeral procession on July 28, 2024 in Majdal Shams for 11 of the 12 children and teenagers killed in a rocket attack the prior day. Photo: Reuters/Ammar Awad
Israel’s Olympic delegation gathered at the Olympic Village in Paris on Sunday night to have a minute of silence in honor of the 12 Druze Israeli children killed a day earlier in a Hezbollah rocket attack in the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria.
Israeli athletes, staff members, and heads of the delegation all came together to pay tribute to victims of the attack, in which 20 others were wounded, according to the Israeli military. An Iranian-made rocket, fired by Hezbollah from Lebanon, hit a soccer field where children were playing in Majdal Shams, a Druze-majority town located south of Lebanon and next to the Syrian border.
All those killed were between the ages of 10 and 16.
The Israeli Olympic delegation shared a photo on Facebook of delegation members gathered in a circle, with their heads bowed down, as they stood in silence in memory of the children killed in the Hezbollah strike. The delegation said the attack and the ongoing Israel-Hamas war are “constantly in the minds and hearts of all the delegation members.”
During the funeral for 11 of the 12 children killed in the attack, thousands of Druze mourners, many in traditional high white and red Druze headwear, surrounded the caskets on Sunday as they were carried through Majdal Shams. The 12th victim — 11-year-old Jifara Ibrahim — was thought initially to be missing after the Hezbollah attack, but authorities confirmed on late Sunday that he was also killed in the rocket strike.
Israel vowed retaliation for the deadly strike and hit a number of targets inside southern Lebanon on Sunday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also said that Hezbollah “will pay a heavy price for this attack, one that it has not paid so far.”
The attack by the Lebanese terrorist organization took place as Israel and another Iran-backed terror group, Hamas, are negotiating a ceasefire deal to end the war in the Gaza Strip that began after the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre in southern Israel.
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