Ten teenagers and young adults have been killed and dozens injured after an attack which hit a football pitch in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, according to Israeli emergency services.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said a rocket fell on the Majdal Shams area of the territory.
The strike was the deadliest in the region since cross-border exchanges between Israel’s military and Hezbollah escalated when the Israel-Hamas war began in October.
The IDF blamed Hezbollah for the attack but Hezbollah spokesman Mohamad Afif denied “any relation to the Majdal Shams incident”.
“All accusations [of the group’s involvement] are false”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been visiting the US, has brought forward his return home. He was briefed by aides on Saturday.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz told Israel’s Channel 12 news: “We are facing an all-out war.”
The attack followed an Israeli strike on Lebanon that killed four militants. Hezbollah fired rockets in response to that, but denied involvement in the Majdal Shams attack.
Verified video shows crowds of people on a football pitch and stretchers being rushed to waiting ambulances.
Majdal Shams is one of four villages in the Golan Heights, where about 25,000 Druze people live.
They were offered Israeli citizenship when the Syrian Golan Heights was annexed in 1981, but most refused. They can study and work in Israel, but not vote.
