It was late morning when two ambulances slowed to a stop outside the village of Mayfadoun in southern Lebanon on Wednesday. Having heard minutes earlier that Israel had attacked two other ambulances, hitting one and then the other after it showed up to help the first, they didn’t hesitate before rushing to the scene. They found a hellscape. The first two ambulances were destroyed, their tires blown and windows shattered. Six of their eight crew members were covered in blood and lying in the road or in the back of a vehicle, the AP reports. A paramedic in one of the driver’s seats, blood pulsing from his abdomen, was cradling a colleague in his lap, pleading with him to stay conscious.
“I felt sick. I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Mohammed Jaber, 43, said Friday from his emergency team’s headquarters in Nabatiyeh. A 10-day truce in the Israel-Hezbollah war delivered the exhausted team a respite from the drum line of explosions. Jaber said he and the others hurried to load the most critically injured into their working ambulances. As team leader Mahdi Abu Zaid ran to close the doors, they, too, were attacked. The three strikes, which killed four paramedics and wounded six, is the latest example of Israel’s willingness to target Lebanon’s health sector. Humanitarian agencies report that an average of two health workers have been killed every day in the war before the truce took hold Friday. Medics rented a tow truck and took Abu Zaid’s mangled ambulance to a public square. “We want this vehicle to bear witness,” one staff member said. The AP’s full report on the issue can be found here.
