Families of the victims of Hezbollah's July 2024 rocket strike that hit Majdal Shams filed a lawsuit in the Jerusalem District Court on Sunday, demanding NIS 80 million in compensation.
The lawsuit was filed by eight families from the largely Druze town in the Golan Heights, near the Israel-Lebanon-Syria tri-border, and seeks punitive damages according to a law for compensating terror victims which the Knesset passed during the Israel-Hamas War.
Meanwhile, an additional lawsuit has been filed recently against the terror group on behalf of 30 locals wounded in the attack, seeking compensation in the amount of NIS 165 million.
The legal team, led by Shurat HaDin's Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, noted that the rocket, which was of Iranian origin, carried a 53kg. warhead and was launched deliberately from Shebaa directly targeting the soccer field, where children were playing at the time.
As a result of the impact, 12 boys and girls were killed, and dozens of others were injured.
"Justice must be done precisely now, when the Hezbollah terror organization is wounded and defeated," Darshan-Leitner said. "With unparalleled cruelty, they deliberately, and with Iranian funding, took the lives of 12 innocent boys and girls. The battle will continue in the legal arena all the way to achieving justice for the victims of terror."
'My life was destroyed,' father of Hezbollah strike victim recounts
"About a year and a half ago, my life was destroyed beyond recognition," Laith Abu Saleh, one of the fathers of the murdered youths, said. "The lawsuit now being filed against Hezbollah will not bring our children back, but it seeks to do a small measure of justice and to establish clear responsibility for the deliberate harm to innocent civilians."
"Even though no lawsuit has the power to heal our pain or return our loved ones, it is meant to set a clear boundary - firing rockets at a civilian population is a shocking crime, and those responsible must be held accountable," he added.