(Beirut) Doctors at two Beirut hospitals described on Wednesday the horrific eye injuries and finger amputations they had to treat after hundreds of pagers belonging to Hezbollah members exploded.
These explosions, which occurred simultaneously on Tuesday afternoon and attributed by Hezbollah to Israel, left 12 dead and nearly 2,800 injured, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health.
“The injuries were mainly located in the eyes and hands, with amputations of fingers and shrapnel in the eyes; some people lost their sight,” Joëlle Khadra, an emergency doctor at the Hôtel-Dieu in Beirut, told AFP.
She said that the Hôtel-Dieu, located in the Christian quarter of Achrafieh, had taken in some 80 wounded.
In the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold where many of the explosions occurred, patients received first aid in a hospital parking lot due to the massive influx.
At the Hôtel-Dieu in Beirut, around twenty injured people “were immediately admitted to intensive care and placed on ventilators to ensure that they did not suffocate as their faces were so swollen,” the doctor added.
“The others are operated on one after the other. Today, we have 55 surgical operations,” she added, still wearing her surgical outfit under her white coat.
“Out of the ordinary”
A doctor at another Beirut hospital described the injuries as “out of the ordinary.”
“I have never seen anything like it. It is indescribable,” added the doctor, who spoke on condition of anonymity and was not authorized to speak to the press.
“We had a lot of injuries with amputated fingers” because people were holding the pagers, while others who were sitting on the ground also had their feet injured.
But the “most terrible” injuries were inflicted by “pagers exploding in people’s faces,” he said, reporting about 40 patients with eye injuries, most of them serious.
“About three-quarters of these patients have lost one eye, and the other is sometimes barely salvageable,” he said. “15 to 20 percent […] have lost both eyes irreversibly.”
“Many colleagues say it’s worse than the injuries [oculaires] “August 4,” the doctor continues, referring to the devastating explosion at the port of Beirut in 2020, which caused more than 220 deaths and 6,500 injuries, including several hundred with eye injuries.
“Critical condition”
The doctor also reported “numerous burns and the presence of foreign bodies, metal pieces of pagers extracted from the eyes, brain, face, sinuses, inside the body and bones.”
Health Minister Firass Abiad announced on Wednesday that among the 12 dead, two were children. He said nearly 300 people were still “in critical condition,” with facial injuries and brain hemorrhages.
Of the approximately 1,800 people admitted to hospital, “460 required surgery on their eyes, face or limbs, particularly hands,” he added, reporting “multiple amputations of fingers and hands.”
Lebanon, which has been struggling with an economic crisis for five years, received medical aid from Iraq this morning. Doctors and nurses from the Iranian Red Crescent also arrived to help, while Jordan announced the shipment of aid and medical supplies.
PHOTO MUSTAFA KHASAF, REUTERS
Lebanon received medical aid from Iraq this morning following the explosions.
The office of the UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon on X praised the work of medical personnel and emergency professionals, whose role after the explosions “cannot be overestimated.”
On Wednesday, new explosions of transmission devices took place in Lebanon.