Israel escalates attacks on Lebanese first responders, possibly a war crime

Until a few Weeks ago, Lebanese Civil Defense staff in the small southern village of Derdghaiya borrowed ambulances from neighboring towns to carry out rescue operations. However, after the Israeli military stepped up its bombardment of southern Lebanon last month, resources across the country’s health sector became scarce. Emergency vehicles from Civil Defense, the country’s rescue service, became increasingly difficult to access.

When Israeli intelligence began detonating a series of bombs embedded in pagers and walkie-talkies across Lebanon on September 17, the scale of the problem became clear. While Israel claimed that the attack targeted members of Hezbollah, the explosives exploded in public spaces such as grocery stores and cafes, killing and injuring scores of people and sending Lebanese first responders fleeing.

Unable to find an ambulance, civil defense workers in Derdghaiya transported the wounded in vegetable carts.

Bachir Nakhal, a Beirut-based volunteer, had previously helped raise funds for new emergency medical equipment in Lebanon’s Tire region, which includes Derdghaiya. In the days following the pager and walkie-talkie bombings, Nakhal told regional civil defense director Abdullah al-Moussawi that he would attempt to raise money to purchase an ambulance for the village of Derdghaiya.

WhatsApp messages were exchanged, Instagram posts took off and soon Nakhal was coordinating the delivery of a shiny new ambulance to Derdghaiya. Members of the local civil defense department were thrilled by the news, Nakhal recalled, sending him messages thanking him for his support and photos of him posing next to the ambulance.

“The area is full of gunpowder, airstrikes and dust,” al-Moussawi said in a voice message to Nakhal. “As disturbing as we are about the strikes and bombings, we are pleased about this support.”

“It is the A, B, C of ethnic cleansing.”

The excitement was short-lived. Four days later, on October 9, an Israeli airstrike targeted the Civil Defense Center in Derdghaiya, killing five first responders, including al-Moussawi and his brother. Photos from the wreckage show the charred skeleton of the recently recovered vehicle, as well as the rubble of an adjacent church and a house where two other civilians were killed.

“I firmly believe that these are targeted attacks on emergency services, because Israel’s strategy is not just to target civilians, but to maim them, incapacitate them and make entire regions uninhabitable,” Nakhal said referred to the Israeli military’s attacks on the healthcare infrastructure in Gaza. “It is the A, B, C of ethnic cleansing.”

War crimes?

The attack was just the latest in a series of attacks on Lebanese first responders. According to the United Nations, more than 100 medical and rescue workers have been killed across Lebanon since Israel’s war on Gaza began last October, with many of the casualties occurring in recent weeks.

“Frontline workers protected by international humanitarian law (IHL) are civilians who risk their lives to help others and should never be targeted,” said Imran Riza, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon , in an Oct. 3 statement. “These attacks disrupt essential services, delay critical care, and violate the right to health care, endangering both responders and the vulnerable populations they serve.”

Targeting health workers and infrastructure is a violation of international humanitarian law codified in the Geneva Conventions, which 195 countries, including Israel, have ratified. (The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

The United Nations recently announced that Israeli attacks have forced 98 health facilities across Lebanon to close.

As the Lebanese public sector contracted through successive economic crises in recent decades, Lebanese civil defense relied on a growing number of volunteers – young men like Nakhal with emergency medicine training who were interested in working in the public service.

Nabil Salhani, a director in charge of the Civil Defense’s training and schools division, told The Intercept that the service has 230 stations across Lebanon, from the southern border areas to the mountainous north. About 2,500 of its first responders are on the government payroll; The remaining 6,000 are volunteers.

Places without official civil defense stations often have their own community emergency response groups, as do political parties such as the Amal Movement and Hezbollah, which provide public health services throughout the south of the country. (Both parties have armed wings that operate independently of their civilian functions.)

After the chaos of the pager attacks, Nakhal said, the different emergency response groups began working together.

“We were all there, dozens and hundreds of first responders,” he said. “All of these teams were working in the same location, cleaning up the same debris together.”

“sense of duty”

When Israel began heavily bombing Palestinians in the Gaza Strip last October, a minor conflict also broke out on Israel’s northern border. Occasional attacks by Hezbollah have been accompanied by more frequent attacks by Israel on Lebanese territory.

Israeli attacks were largely concentrated in southern Lebanon. First responders suffered injuries from minefields, cluster munitions and inhalation of white phosphorus, an incendiary substance that produces thick, toxic smoke and is banned under international law.

The first major attack on first responders came in late March, when seven medics from the Lebanese Succor Association’s emergency and relief corps were killed in an attack on its center in the southern Lebanese town of Hebbariyeh. While the Israeli military said the attack killed an “armed individual” with ties to the medical group, a report by Human Rights Watch found no evidence of a military target at the site.

Since then, the war has intensified and dozens of medics and firefighters from Civil Defense and other first responder groups have been killed on the job.

A few months ago, civil defense workers responded to strikes against individual buildings in Dahiya, a southern suburb of Beirut, Nakhal said. Today, rescue workers are on site and find that entire city blocks have been decimated. While the Israeli military bills each of these attacks as targeted attacks on senior members of Hezbollah, they have resulted in hundreds of civilian casualties and terrorized the Lebanese population.

“The attacks are a scene, and the show we are supposed to see is their impunity, the scale of destruction they rain down on us,” Nakhal said.

In September, the Israeli military bombed a Civil Defense fire truck in the southern Lebanese city of Faroun, killing three first responders and wounding two. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said the men were battling fires caused by Israeli airstrikes; The Israeli military said it “attacked and eliminated terrorists.”

“The attacks are a scene, and the show we are meant to see is their impunity, the scale of destruction they rain down on us.”

Earlier this month, 10 firefighters were killed in an Israeli attack on a municipal building in Baraachit, a rural town in southern Lebanon. The men were “ready to go on rescue missions,” said a spokesman for the Ministry of Health; The Israeli military said Hezbollah fighters had used the fire station as a military post.

He added that Nakhal noted that the strikes against medical workers had been accompanied by Israeli attacks on other civilian infrastructure. Israel recently targeted a key water supply route on the Litani River, another key source of supply that is no longer available in the region.

A few days after the attack on Derdghaiya, the Israeli military published a tweet claiming without evidence that Hezbollah was using ambulances to transport weapons. Nakhal said that despite these statements, which indicate that civil defense workers continue to be targeted, he and other volunteers would not abandon their posts.

“There is a risk and we are not blind to it, but there is also a sense of duty,” he said. “You have to make sure your services are there. You have to make sure you can support your people.”