‘Body parts everywhere’: Lebanon rescuers struggle under Israeli fire

Beirut: When Israel bombed buildings outside the southern Lebanese city of Sidon, Mohamed Arkadan and his team rushed to an emergency unlike anything they had ever seen.

About a dozen apartments had collapsed onto the hillside they once overlooked, burying more than 100 people. Even after 17 years with the civil defence forces of one of the world’s most war-torn nations, Arkadan was shocked at the destruction. By Monday afternoon – about 24 hours after the bombing – his team had pulled more than 40 bodies, including children’s, from the rubble, along with 60 survivors.

Ali Abdel Rahman Zorout, 5, who was wounded in an Israeli airstrike, poses at the Alaaeddine Hospital in Sarafand, south Lebanon.Credit: AP

The small bodies broke his heart, said Arkadan, 38, but his team of over 30 first responders’ inability to help further pained him more. Firetrucks and ambulances haven’t been replaced in years. Rescue tools and equipment are in short supply. His team has to buy their uniforms out of pocket.

An economic crisis that began in 2019 and a massive 2020 port explosion have left Lebanon struggling to provide basic services such as electricity and medical care. Political divisions have left the country of 6 million without a president or functioning government for more than two years, deepening a national sense of abandonment reaching down to the people the country depends on in emergencies.

“We have zero capabilities, zero logistics,” Arkadan said. “We have no gloves, no personal protection gear.”

War has upended Lebanon again

Israel’s intensified air campaign against Hezbollah has upended the country. More than 1000 people have been killed in Israeli strikes since September 17, nearly a quarter of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry.

Paramedics treats a man who was injured after an Israeli airstrike hit two adjacent buildings east of the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, on Sunday.Credit: AP

On Thursday (AEST) two Israeli strikes hit an Islamic rescue centre, affiliated with Hezbollah, in the south, killing six medics and destroying the building, according to Lebanon’s National News agency. Before those deaths were reported, the ministry said it had documented the deaths of more than 40 medics and rescuers.

Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes, sleeping on beaches and streets.

The World Health Organisation said more than 30 primary healthcare centres around Lebanon’s affected areas have been closed.

This week, Israel said it began a limited ground operation against Hezbollah and warned people to evacuate several southern communities, promising further escalation.

First responders: Ambulances arrive at the site of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Friday.Credit: AP

A day after Iran fired more than 180 missiles into Israel, Israel said eight of its soldiers were killed in ground combat in south Lebanon.

The Israeli military said regular infantry and armoured units had joined ground operations. It also targeted a building in the Beirut central district of Bachoura near parliament, the closest it has come to the centre of Lebanon’s capital.

Hezbollah said its fighters engaged Israeli forces inside Lebanon. The movement reported ground clashes for the first time since Israeli forces pushed over the border on Monday. Hezbollah said it had destroyed three Israeli Merkava tanks with rockets near the border town of Maroun al-Ras.

Lebanon is “grappling with multiple crises, which have overwhelmed the country’s capacity to cope,” said Imran Riza, the United Nations’ humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon, who said the body had allocated $US24 million ($35 million) in emergency funding for people affected by the fighting.

Exhausted medical staff are struggling to cope with the daily influx of new patients. Under government emergency plans, hospitals and medical workers have halted non-urgent operations.

Government shelters are full

In the southern province of Tyre, many doctors have fled along with residents. In Nabatiyeh, the largest province in southern Lebanon, first responders say they have been working around the clock since last week to reach hundreds of people wounded in bombings that hit dozens of villages and towns, often many on the same day.

After the bombing in Sidon nearly 250 first responders joined Arkadan’s team, including a specialised search-and-rescue unit from Beirut, some 45km to the north. His team didn’t have the modern equipment needed to pull people from a disaster.

People and rescue teams search for victims after an Israeli airstrike hit two adjacent buildings, in Ain el-Delb neighbourhood east of the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon.Credit: AP

“We used traditional tools, like scissors, cables, shovels,” Arkadan said.

“Anyone here?” rescuers shouted through the gaps in mounds of rubble, searching for survivors buried deeper underground. One excavator removed the debris slowly, to avoid shaking the heaps of bricks and mangled steel.

Many sought refuge in the ancient city of Tyre, 20km north of the border with Israel, thinking it was likely to be spared bombardment. More than 8000 people arrived, said Hassan Dbouk, the head of its disaster management unit.

He said there were no pre-positioned supplies, such as food parcels, hygiene kits and mattresses, and trying to move goods by truck now is fraught with danger. Farmers have been denied access to their land because of the bombings and the municipality is struggling to pay salaries.

The humanitarian situation is catastrophic

Meanwhile, garbage is piling up on the streets. The number of municipal workers has shrunk from 160 to 10.

“The humanitarian situation is catastrophic,” Dbouk said.

Wissam Ghazal, the Health Ministry official in Tyre, said in one hospital, only five of 35 doctors have remained. In Tyre province, eight medics, including three with a medical organisation affiliated with Hezbollah, were killed over two days, he said.

Over the weekend, the city itself became a focus of attacks.

A wounded girl lies in a hospital bed in the southern village of Saksakieh, Lebanon.Credit: AP

Israeli warplanes struck near the port city’s famed ruins, along its beaches and in residential and commercial areas, forcing thousands of residents to flee. At least 15 civilians were killed at the weekend, including two municipal workers, a soldier and several children, all but one from two families.

It took rescuers two days to comb through the rubble of a home in the Kharab neighbourhood in the city’s centre, where a bomb had killed nine members of the al-Samra family.

Six premature babies in incubators around the city were moved to Beirut. The city’s only doctor, who looked after them, couldn’t move between hospitals under fire, Ghazal said.

One of the district’s four hospitals shut after sustaining damage from a strike that affected its electricity supply and damaged the operations room. In two other hospitals, glass windows were broken. For now, the city’s hospitals are receiving more killed than wounded.

“But you don’t know what will happen when the intensity of attacks increases. We will definitely need more.”

Making do with what they have

Hosein Faqih, head of civil defence in the Nabatiyeh province, said that “we are working in very difficult and critical circumstances because the strikes are random. We have no protection. We have no shields, no helmets, no extra hoses. The newest vehicle is 25 years old. We are still working despite all that.”

At least three of his firefighters’ team were killed in early September. Ten have been injured since then. Of 45 vehicles, six were hit and are now out of service.

Faqih said he was limiting his team’s search-and-rescue missions to residential areas, keeping them away from forests or open areas where they used to put out fires.

“These days, there is something difficult every day. Body parts are everywhere, children, civilians and bodies under rubble,” Faqih said. Still, he said, he considered his job to be the safety net for the people.

“We serve the people, and we will work with what we have.”

AP, with Reuters