The United States (US) on Sunday blamed Lebanon's Hezbollah movement for a rocket attack in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that killed 12 children and teenagers on a soccer field, raising the threat of a wider war in the Middle East.
On Saturday, after the attack, Israel also blamed Hezbollah and said it would strike hard at the Iranian-backed movement, while Hezbollah denied responsibility.
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The attack sparked fears of a wider conflict in the region, where tensions have been heightened by the war in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military said the young men were hit on Saturday by an Iranian-made rocket carrying a 50-kilogram warhead fired by Hezbollah at a soccer field in the Druze Arab town of Majdal Shams.
"This attack was carried out by the Lebanese Hezbollah. It was their rocket and it was launched from an area they control," the White House said on Sunday.
The White House added that Washington had been in talks with Israeli and Lebanese officials since Saturday's attack, which it described as "horrific".
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said on Sunday that he did not want to see an escalation of the conflict on Israel's northern border and reiterated US support for Israel.
"I emphasize (Israel's) right to defend its citizens and our determination to ensure that they can do so," Blinken said during a news conference in Tokyo. "But we also don't want to see an escalation of the conflict. We don't want it to spread."
The White House announced that Washington is working on a diplomatic solution to end the attacks along the Israeli-Lebanese border.
Blinken said he was saddened by the loss of life and added that reaching a cease-fire agreement in the war in the Gaza Strip could help calm the situation on Israel's border with Lebanon.
"It's so important that we help defuse that conflict, not just to prevent it from escalating, to prevent it from spreading, but to defuse it because you have so many people in both countries, both in Israel and in Lebanon, who have been displaced from their homes," Blinken said. .
The USA, Qatar and Egypt tried to mediate the dispute. But Israel and Palestinian Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, have yet to agree on a permanent ceasefire. The US and the EU consider Hamas a terrorist organization.
The Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah evacuated its positions in the country, after Israel threatened to "attack it with force", in retaliation for the rocket attack on the annexed Golan Heights, a source close to Hezbollah told France Press today.
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