{"id":586973,"date":"2026-04-07T00:47:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T00:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/586973\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T00:47:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T00:47:08","slug":"israel-targets-lebanons-health-care-system-echoing-actions-in-gaza-doctors-warn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/586973\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel targets Lebanon\u2019s health care system, echoing actions in Gaza, doctors warn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli strike in Beirut on Sunday. A medical source says it made impact about 100 metres away from a public hospital.IBRAHIM AMRO\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Two years ago, Dr. Mohammed Ziara watched Israel<\/a> ravage Gaza\u2019s health care system, shelling hospitals, striking ambulances and forcing patients to evacuate.<\/p>\n

Now Ziara \u2013 along with many other medical workers, human rights groups and civilians \u2013 warns that the same scenario is unfolding in Lebanon.<\/p>\n

Israel is pushing deep into the southern part of the country in its campaign against the Iran-backed group Hezbollah, a powerful militant force and political party that long has exercised de facto control over much of Lebanon\u2019s Shiite community.<\/p>\n

To describe its strategy in this war, the Israeli military has invoked the devastation it wrought in Gaza after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. At one point last month, Israeli warplanes even dropped leaflets over Beirut warning that after \u201cgreat success in Gaza, a new reality is coming to Lebanon, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve lived this before,\u201d Ziara, a surgeon from Gaza City who specializes in burns, told The Associated Press on Thursday at a government hospital in the Lebanese port city of Sidon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI cannot go back to Gaza now,\u201d Ziara said. \u201cBut I can be here, in Lebanon.\u201d<\/p>\n

As it did with Hamas in Gaza, Israel accuses Hezbollah of hiding in and operating from civilian areas, and using hospitals and ambulances for military purposes. Israel has increasingly targeted Lebanese first responders and medical centres, forcing several hospitals to evacuate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was besieged in a hospital,\u201d Ziara said of his time at Gaza\u2019s Shifa Hospital, where he worked before evacuating to Egypt with his family. He then joined the U.K.-based non-profit Interburns, which sent him to Lebanon in 2024 to respond to the outbreak of the previous Israel-Hezbollah war. \u201cI feel what these people feel.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Since the war between Israel and Hezbollah reignited on March 2, Israeli air strikes have killed at least 57 health professionals as of Monday, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.<\/p>\n

Israel has carried out more than 160 attacks against emergency medical workers and ambulances, and forced the closure of six hospitals and 49 health clinics through attacks or threats, the ministry reported. In the latest attack that killed two paramedics and seriously wounded a third early Monday, the ministry accused Israel of deliberately targeting a gathering of first responders on duty.<\/p>\n

Ziara and his team from Interburns, which trains medics around the world in burn care, have helped set up the Lebanese public health system\u2019s first specialized burn unit \u2013 a critical resource in this crisis-stricken country where the war has killed 1,461 people and wounded 4,430, according to the ministry. Israel claims to have killed hundreds of Hezbollah operatives in the latest bombardment and ground invasion.<\/p>\n

The Israeli military argues that Hezbollah\u2019s use of medical facilities makes them legitimate military targets under international law. It does not offer evidence to support its claims.<\/p>\n

Hezbollah denies conducting militant activities within civilian sites. Although the group\u2019s presence in residential areas is well-documented, there has been no independent verification of its use of hospitals for military purposes.<\/p>\n

Based in the first city just north of Israel\u2019s evacuation zone that covers nearly all southern Lebanon, the Sidon Government Emergency Hospital takes more wounded people every day, said Mona Teryaki, the director. \u201cThere\u2019s so much demand that we don\u2019t have enough nurses.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Kamal Fakih, 27, hates when people ask him what happened on March 17.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that it pains him to recall the Israeli air strike. It\u2019s that he doesn\u2019t remember anything at all. He regained consciousness a day later at the hospital in Sidon, his body burned and cut by shrapnel.<\/p>\n

Once stabilized, Fakih tried to connect with the paramedic who pulled him and his friend Hassan from the burning rubble, hoping to hear his account and thank him for saving their lives. But by the time Fakih got his contact, Muhammad Tafili was already dead, killed with a fellow paramedic in an Israeli air strike on ambulances in the southeastern village of Kfar Tebnit on March 28, according to Lebanon\u2019s Health Ministry.<\/p>\n

That same day, Israeli attacks killed seven other medics across four additional villages, the World Health Organization said. Among the dead was a medic targeted while responding to an Israeli air strike that killed three journalists working for pro-Hezbollah TV channels. Footage of the incident shows two strikes in quick succession \u2013 the first hitting journalists in their car, the second crashing into paramedics as they rushed to the rescue.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s military accused the two medics, and two of the three journalists killed, of being Hezbollah operatives. Its claim alarmed watchdogs that witnessed similar justifications for killing more than 260 journalists and 1,700 health workers in Gaza, according to figures from the United Nations humanitarian agency.<\/p>\n

Although Lebanese medical workers and journalists were killed during the 2024 war with Hezbollah, \u201cthis time is different,\u201d said Ramzi Kaiss, the Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch.<\/p>\n

He pointed to a startling vow by Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz last week that Israel would flatten all the houses in southern Lebanon to protect its border towns from Hezbollah rockets \u201cin accordance with the model used in Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza\u201d \u2013 two cities that Israel almost entirely razed in its offensive against Hamas.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a new kind of brazenness in declaring an intent to commit unlawful attacks,\u201d Kaiss said. \u201cIt appears that impunity has emboldened the Israeli military.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sweeping Israeli evacuation orders in recent weeks have sent over one million Lebanese flocking north. As the south came under heavy bombardment, clinics shuttered or suspended operations. Nabih Berri Hospital was swamped by an influx of casualties. To make room, it evacuated dozens of patients.<\/p>\n

Such transfers involve co-ordination with the Lebanese army, Health Ministry and UN peacekeeping force \u2013 a game of telephone, doctors say, that creates potentially life-threatening delays. Admitting patients isn\u2019t easy either; the Sidon burn unit must discharge a patient to free up a bed.<\/p>\n

But the referrals keep coming, straining a health system already crippled by economic collapse.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe health system is on its knees,\u201d Ziara said, as the hospital was plunged into darkness until backup generators kicked in 10 minutes later, a result of Lebanon\u2019s long-running electricity crisis. \u201cNow front-line hospitals are lacking staff and supplies. They\u2019re overwhelmed.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Lebanese civilians say that Israeli bombs often come without warning and hit indiscriminately, feeding a growing feeling that Palestinians in Gaza know well \u2013 that nowhere is safe.<\/p>\n

Mohammad Qubaisi, 53, said his neighbourhood of Zuqaq al-Blat in central Beirut had not received Israeli evacuation guidance before March 18, when Israeli munitions slammed into his seventh-floor apartment.<\/p>\n

Carrying his wife from the smouldering ruins, he shouted for his sons. His eldest, Adam, called to him. But he couldn\u2019t hear Jad.<\/p>\n

Qubaisi ran back into the skin-searing steam to search for his 15-year-old. When he woke up at the hospital hours later, his face raw with second-degree burns, he knew his son was gone.<\/p>\n

The Israeli military said it was targeting Hezbollah. Qubaisi pushed back.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are civilian buildings, not military targets. They hit us and we still don\u2019t know why,\u201d he said from the Sidon hospital. \u201cWe were sleeping safely in our home, and look what happened to us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli strike in Beirut on Sunday.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,84,392,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":{"0":"post-586973","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-alberta","9":"tag-arts-news","10":"tag-bc","11":"tag-breaking-news","12":"tag-breaking-news-video","13":"tag-british-columbia","14":"tag-ca","15":"tag-canada","16":"tag-canada-news","17":"tag-canada-sports","18":"tag-canada-sports-news","19":"tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","20":"tag-canadian-breaking-news","21":"tag-canadian-news","22":"tag-economy","23":"tag-education","24":"tag-environment","25":"tag-federal-government","26":"tag-foreign-news","27":"tag-globe-and-mail","28":"tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","29":"tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","30":"tag-government","31":"tag-health","32":"tag-healthcare","33":"tag-life-news","34":"tag-lifestyle","35":"tag-local-news","36":"tag-manitoba","37":"tag-national-news","38":"tag-new-brunswick","39":"tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","40":"tag-northwest-territories","41":"tag-nova-scotia","42":"tag-nunavut","43":"tag-ontario","44":"tag-pei","45":"tag-photos","46":"tag-political-news","47":"tag-political-opinion","48":"tag-politics","49":"tag-politics-news","50":"tag-quebec","51":"tag-sports-news","52":"tag-technology","53":"tag-travel","54":"tag-trudeau","55":"tag-us-news","56":"tag-world-news","57":"tag-yukon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}