Israeli ministers were met with jeers and heckles at the funerals of 12 children killed in a suspected Hezbollah rocket attack on Saturday.

Israel has accused the Iran-backed group of killing the children and teenagers in a rocket attack on a football pitch in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, but Hezbollah has denied responsibility.

On Sunday, thousands of mourners at the funeral in northern Israel’s Majdal Shams grew angry when Israeli government ministers arrived, fearing they would try to politicise the event.

Nir Barkat, the housing minister, Idit Silman, the environmental protection minister, and Bezalel Smotrich, the controversial Right-wing finance minister, were subjected to abuse and jeers.

Mourners accused them of having long abandoned the local Arabic-speaking Druze religious minority group to which the victims belonged.

Mr Smotrich, an advocate for war with Lebanon, was shouted at to leave and had profanities hurled at him.

More than 40,000 people live in the Golan Heights, which border Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Syria claims ownership of the area.

Donald Trump as president said that the United States should back Israeli sovereignty over the Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in 1967. The UK has stayed largely quiet on the issue.

Categorical denial

Before the football pitch was hit on Saturday evening, Hezbollah has announced it had fired rockets at Israeli military sites. But it swiftly denied involvement in the attack on Majdal Shams, saying it had “absolutely nothing to do with the incident, and categorically [denied] all false allegations in this regard”.

Israel said on Sunday it would strike back hard in response .

The Druze community had said the politicians were not welcome at the funeral on Sunday.

Yasser Gadban, chairman of the Forum of Druze and Circassian Authorities, wrote in a letter to the government: “We ask all government representatives, ministers and senior officers, do not come. 

“Due to the sensitivity of the situation, we ask that you not turn a massacre event into a political event. We are requesting a quiet, religious funeral in accordance with Druze custom.”

Speaking at the funeral, Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif called the attack “a dark Saturday for the Druze and for residents of the north”.

“It’s a Saturday that will be engraved in memory as a low point in humanity, the killing of children. The scenes of horror will never be erased,” he said.