(Beirut) In the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, wounded people are treated in a hospital parking lot and on bloodied stretchers while residents flock to donate blood, after the pagers of members of the pro-Iranian group exploded.
Hundreds of simultaneous explosions of these messaging devices on Tuesday afternoon in several Hezbollah strongholds caused scenes of chaos across Lebanon.
“I have never seen anything like this in my life,” Moussa, a resident of the southern suburbs, who asked to be identified only by his first name, told AFP.
“My wife and I were going to the doctor, and it just blew up […] “I found people lying on the ground in front of me,” he says. “People didn’t know what was happening.”
Lebanon’s health ministry said nine people were killed and some 2,800 injured. Hezbollah accused Israel of being “entirely responsible” for the blasts.
Cared for in a parking lot
In a hospital in the southern suburbs of Beirut, an AFP correspondent saw wounded people being treated in a parking lot, on mattresses laid on the floor and stretchers covered in blood.
Outside another hospital, an injured person is being treated in a car. Inside the facility, an AFP correspondent saw a man injured in the face, eye and hand, and another in the hip.
Images of bloodied people, some with missing fingers, were circulating on social media.
PHOTO STR, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Civil Defense rescuers carry an injured man in the city of Sidon.
In tents hastily set up under a bridge in Beirut’s southern suburbs, hundreds of people gathered to donate blood, amid the sirens of ambulances.
A witness told AFP he saw a Hezbollah member he knew receiving messages on his pager before the device exploded.
PHOTO AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Doctors collect blood donations in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Elsewhere in the commercial district of Hamra, dozens of people gathered outside the entrance to one of the capital’s main hospitals, amid the constant coming and going of ambulances.
Outside the emergency department of the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC), men and women, some in black chadors, try to get news of the injured in an atmosphere of chaos.
Cries of anger
Some are crying, others are screaming in anger. A person on the phone informs a woman that a relative of hers has lost a hand and is injured in the hip.
Sirens sound throughout the city as ambulances arrive one after another, from the Civil Defense and the Lebanese Red Cross, but also from other emergency services, including rescuers affiliated with the Amal movement, an ally of Hezbollah.
Soldiers and civilians try to ease the passage of vehicles, while rescue workers in fluorescent vests guide ambulances through the congested streets of the capital.
In southern Lebanon, an AFP correspondent saw dozens of ambulances traveling between the cities of Tyre and Sidon in both directions, with hospitals in both cities overwhelmed.
An AFP correspondent in eastern Lebanon said many people had been injured in similar incidents in the Bekaa Valley.
Hezbollah, which has been exchanging fire with Israel for nearly a year in support of the Palestinian Hamas in Gaza, had asked its members not to use their cell phones to thwart any Israeli spying and interference attempts.