The BBC has been condemned for its reporting of Saturday’s deadly Hezbollah rocket attack on Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights.

The BBC’s article about the attack was headlined: “Ten dead in rocket attack on Israeli-occupied Golan.”

The headline, which was altered after a few hours, did not refer to Hezbollah, the Druze community, or that the rocket struck children playing football, while it appeared to imply a political justification for the killings.

The strike – which killed 12 young people aged 10-20 years old playing football in the Druze village – marks the deadliest day in Israel since October 7. The IDF has since identified the rocket fired from Lebanon as an Iranian-made weapon.

People were swift to slam the BBC coverage of the tragedy.

On Twitter/X, Simon Sebag Montefiore wrote: “It’s weird culture can’t name Iran-terror-sect Hezbollah as perpetrators. Balance never perfect but we need neutral coverage of complex region. Bias has degraded this institution.”

Israel’s official N12 news channel echoed these concerns, querying whether the victims “died or were killed”.

The original BBC headline was up for several hours

Investigative journalist and antisemitism campaigner David Collier also took to Twitter/X to criticise the article, writing: “There are Druze in Majdal Shams with Israeli citizenship. Can you the BBC ever write an article about Israel without skewing it politically against Israel [or] making factual errors as they do so.”

War studies lecturer at the Royal Military Academy, Andrew Fox, compared the headline with another BBC story written on the same day about an IDF strike in Gaza which stated, “Israeli strike on Gaza ‘kills 30’”.

Fox called the headlines “utterly despicable”, commenting on Twitter/X: “BBC headline does not mention that the strike in Israel was on a playground and children were killed. Nice cheeky little dig with ‘Israeli-occupied’, too. They frame the other as if this was an ordinary school. Hamas use schools as cover for their fighters.”

The BBC has since updated its headline to reflect the ongoing news story: “Israel hits Hezbollah targets after football pitch strike kills 12 young people.”

A BBC spokesperson said: “This was a breaking news story that was developed line by line as details were confirmed and new lines emerged. We routinely change headlines as more information becomes available.

“The BBC is committed to reporting the Israel-Gaza war impartially, with no agenda and to the highest standards of journalism. Our own audience research shows that BBC News is considered the most impartial provider for coverage of the conflict.”

Much of the international community defines the Golan Heights as Israeli-occupied territory. Israel captured land from Syria after the six-day war in 1967 and annexed it in 1981. Under President Donald Trump, the US recognised Israeli sovereignty over the area in 2019.

Majdal Shams is one of four villages in the Golan Heights, where roughly 20,000-25,000 members of the Druze community group live. Some records trace the origins of the settlement to the 16th century.

Arabic-speaking Druze in Israel have full citizenship rights and comprise about 1.5 per cent of the population. When the region was annexed in 1981, Druze were offered Israeli citizenship, but not everyone accepted.

Members of the community identify as both Syrian and Israeli and many have dual citizenship.