Casualties rising as assault on Hezbollah leaves war-weary nation apprehensive of more pain to come
For months, the staff at Rafik Hariri university hospital had been preparing for the worst. Nurses ran drills in parking garages, practising transferring patients from the wards to the bombproof concrete structures. A building was left empty on the hospital campus so that if mass bombing occurred, medics could bring their families with them and not worry about their safety.
On Friday night, the drills seemed to pay off. Dozens of bombs were dropped on Dahiya, the southern suburbs of Beirut, sending residents running to the safest place they could think of – the nearby hospital.
People ran to the gates of Rafik Hariri hospital, asking to stay in the car park until the bombing ceased. Staff could not let them in because they had to keep the way clear for incoming wounded and were expecting hundreds of casualties from the airstrikes, which killed the head of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, and levelled a city block. The residents settled for waiting outside the hospital gates, staying as close to the structure as possible until the Israeli bombing of Dahiya slowed in the morning.
Once the displaced left, the wounded started coming in. Hospitals in Dahiya transferred patients to Rafik Hariri and other surrounding medical centres after the ministry of health ordered the evacuation of all hospitals in the southern suburbs.
Contrary to expectations, the wounded from Friday’s strike on Dahiya came at a trickle, the health ministry reporting 11 dead and 108 wounded in its latest update. The deep craters where six buildings used to stand, a result of the powerful bunker bombs Israel had dropped, made search and rescue difficult.
Lebanon’s first responders, who had grown used to sifting through rubble over the last 12 months of fighting, found themselves combing through destruction the likes of which they had never seen before. Two days after the strike, the death toll continued to steadily climb.
The hospital system had successfully passed its latest crisis, nurses and doctors exhausted after two weeks of non-stop mass casualty events. No one, however, was optimistic, bracing themselves for further escalation, including the possibility of an Israeli ground invasion.
“We’re facing a big psychological challenge. We’re are scared that the basic supplies will be cut off. I’m scared that if the situation continues, we will be cut off from everything,” Shoshana Mazraani, the emergency room director of Marjayoun public hospital in south Lebanon, said.
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