https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/03/lebanese-healthcare-workers-fearful-as-growing-numbers-killed-in-strikes?CMP=share_btn_url
Lebanese healthcare workers fearful as growing numbers killed in strikes
At least 50 paramedics have been killed in Lebanon over the last two weeks
The
airstrikes started just before noon. The injured and the dead quickly
followed. As the ground in the southern Lebanese town of Marjayoun began
to shake from the relentless approach of Israeli bombs, Shoshan
Mazraani let her muscle memory take over.
As
the emergency room director of its public hospital, she was well versed
in the grim logistics of the triage procedures that follow a bombing.
Then after five hours of gruelling work, the din of the emergency room
was interrupted by a long whistle.
Doctors
turned their heads, a reflex after nearly a year of war. Then a blast,
the doors of the hospital blown open, the windows shattering and cracks
spreading across the hospital walls.
“When I
heard the rocket, I thought it was coming to hit us. Then there was a
tremendous pressure in the hospital, the doors buckled from it. I really
thought the rocket had impacted us,” Mazraani said.
Two
airstrikes had landed just metres from the hospital on Monday last
week, damaging its interior and forcing medical workers to stop their
work until they could figure out if they were under attack.
The
airstrikes took Mazraani by surprise. Marjayoun, colloquially referred
to as the beginning of the “Christian corridor” by UN peacekeepers in
south Lebanon,
had remained relatively untouched by fighting. As late as July,
residents of the town could be seen going on scenic jogs, UN armoured
personnel carriers passing them by and plumes of smoke rising from the
hills just a few miles away.
Marjayoun’s
hospital, in particular, was thought to be safe. But on 23 September,
when Israel began a punishing aerial offensive on Lebanon that has so
far killed 700 and wounded more than 2,000, healthcare workers suddenly
found themselves at risk.
Photograph: Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters
At
least 50 paramedics have been killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon over
the last two weeks, more than doubling the number of healthcare workers
killed since the beginning of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel
last year.
Of the paramedics killed over the
last two weeks, all have belonged to healthcare services affiliated with
either Hezbollah or Amal, another Shia political party – affiliations
which rights experts say does not affect their protected status under
international law.
One after another, Israeli
airstrikes last week began to hit near hospitals in Lebanon’s south. On
Tuesday one airstrike landed next to Bint Jbeil hospital and another hit
the outskirts of Tibnine public hospital as ambulances were approaching
it. An empty building next to Ragheb Harb University hospital near
Nabatieh was hit on Wednesday and then again on Thursday.
The strikes continued into this week. In the early hours of Thursday, Israel struck a medical centre
belonging to the Islamic Health Organisation – a Hezbollah-linked
paramedic service – in central Beirut, killing at least nine and
wounding 14.
Smoke rises from Israeli airstrikes on villages in the Nabatieh district, seen from the southern town of Marjayoun. Photograph: Hussein Malla/AP
Paramedics
say they began to notice a pattern with the strikes: whenever they
arrived at a location to start rescue operations, they said Israeli
airstrikes would follow. In one case, in the town of Suhmoor in the
western Bekaa valley on Monday last week, an ambulance was struck
directly after the team left the car. Pictures of the vehicle engulfed
in flames circulated in Lebanese media.
Meanwhile,
paramedics have begun receiving strange calls with a voice speaking
Arabic on the other end, warning them to evacuate their medical centres,
said Rabih Issah, a local commissioner of Islamic Kashafat al-Risala
medical organisation that serves much of south Lebanon.
Last
Wednesday, paramedics in two different villages received calls, forcing
the workers to stop their work and evacuate, though the buildings were
not bombed. Unlike the wave of Israeli calls that warned 80,000 Lebanese
to distance themselves from buildings it alleged contained Hezbollah
weapons ahead of Israel’s aerial campaign in south Lebanon the week
before, these warnings were directed only at the medical workers.
Human
rights experts have said that the targeting of medical workers and
false calls for evacuations are forbidden under international law.
“Calls
for evacuating areas that are primarily intended to cause panic among
residents or compel them to leave these areas for reasons other than
their safety are prohibited under customary international humanitarian
law,” said Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher for Human Rights Watch.
He
added that healthcare workers and facilities, “regardless of
affiliation”, cannot be targeted in attacks unless “they commit or
healthcare facilities are being used to commit acts harmful to the
enemy”.
The Israeli military told the Guardian
in response to claims that it has targeted paramedics and hospitals:
“The [Israel Defense Forces] operates in strict accordance with
international law [and] takes all feasible precautions in order to
mitigate harm to civilians during operational activity.”
Ghassan
Abu-Sittah, a plastic surgeon who worked in Gaza over the last year and
is now in Beirut, said the treatment of medical workers over the last
two weeks in Lebanon’s south was reminiscent of Israeli tactics in Gaza.
“On
the 12th of October in Gaza, five days before the attack on al-Ahli
hospital, they were phoning hospital directors and blaming him for the
deaths of anybody who died when the hospital would be targeted,”
Abu-Sittah said. He said he was concerned that damaging the health
system in south Lebanon is part of an Israeli strategy to clear areas
along the Lebanon-Israel border of its inhabitants.
The phone calls and the bombs that seem to follow them wherever they go have frayed the nerves of medical workers.
“We
are scared that we will be bombed,” Mazraani said, adding that she
tries to keep the morale of her team high. “We are trying as much as we
can to continue, because there are still people here.”
She
added, with pride, that no one from her department had left Marjayoun,
despite the danger. “Maybe it’s because I haven’t left,” she said. “If I
left, morale would fall, and maybe the others would start to leave to.”