After Gaza devastation, Israeli attacks on Lebanon's health care system
feel familiar for many
[April 06, 2026]
By ISABEL DEBRE
SIDON, Lebanon (AP) — Two years ago, Dr. Mohammed Ziara watched Israel
ravage Gaza's health care system, shelling hospitals, striking
ambulances and forcing patients to evacuate.
Now Ziara — along with other medical workers, human rights groups and
many civilians — warns that the same scenario is unfolding in Lebanon.
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’s Shiite community.
To describe its strategy in this war, the Israeli military invokes the
devastation it wrought in Gaza after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023,
attacks. Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets over Beirut last month
warning that after “great success in Gaza, a new reality is coming to
Lebanon, too.”
“I've lived this before,” Ziara, a burn surgeon from Gaza City, told The
Associated Press on Thursday at the government hospital in the Lebanese
port city of Sidon. “I cannot go back to Gaza now,” Ziara said. “But I
can be here, in Lebanon.”
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 first responders and
medical centers, forcing several hospitals to evacuate.
“I was besieged in a hospital,” Ziara said of his work in Gaza. “I lost
my brother in an airstrike. I feel what these people feel.”
An Israeli offensive threatens a health system, again
Since the war between Israel and Hezbollah reignited on March 2, Israeli
airstrikes have killed at least 54 health professionals as of Sunday,
according to the Lebanese health ministry.
Israel has carried out 152 attacks against emergency medical workers and
ambulances, and forced the closure of six hospitals and 49 health
clinics through attacks or threats, the ministry says.
In Sidon, Ziara and his team from U.K.-based nonprofit Interburns have
set up the Lebanese public health system's first specialized burn unit —
a critical resource in this crisis-stricken country where the war
between Israel and Hezbollah has already 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.
The Israeli military argues that Hezbollah’s use of medical facilities
makes them legitimate military targets under international law. It does
not offer evidence to support its claims.
Hezbollah denies conducting militant activities within civilian sites.
Although the group's presence in residential areas is well-documented,
there has been no independent verification of its use of hospitals for
military purposes.
Interburns, which trains local medics in burn care around the world,
began building up the unit at Sidon Government Hospital during the 2024
Israel-Hezbollah war. Lebanese authorities asked the team to return when
the war reignited last month.
As the first city just north of Israel’s evacuation zone that covers
nearly all southern Lebanon, Sidon takes more wounded people every day.
The rising toll of rescue work
Kamal Fakih, 27, hates when people ask him what happened on March 17.
It’s not that it pains him to recall the Israeli airstrike. It’s that he
doesn’t remember anything at all. He regained consciousness a day later
at the hospital in Sidon, his body burned and lacerated by shrapnel.
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 airstrike on ambulances in the southeastern
village of Kfar Tebnit on March 28, according to Lebanon’s health
ministry.
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Smoke rises from Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of
Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
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 airstrike
that killed three journalists working for pro-Hezbollah TV channels.
Footage of the incident shows two strikes in quick succession — the
first hitting journalists in their car, the second crashing into
paramedics as they rushed to the rescue.
Israel's military accused the two medics, and two of the three
journalists killed, of being Hezbollah operatives. Its claim alarmed
watchdogs that witnessed its similar justifications for killing more
than 260 journalists and 1,700 health workers in Gaza, according to
the United Nations humanitarian agency.
Although Lebanese medical workers and journalists were killed during
the 2024 war with Hezbollah, “this time is different,” said Ramzi
Kaiss, the Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch.
He pointed to a startling promise by Israeli Defense Minister Israel
Katz last week that, to protect its border towns from Hezbollah
rockets, Israel would flatten all the houses in southern Lebanon “in
accordance with the model used in Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza” —
two cities that Israel almost entirely razed in its offensive
against Hamas in the enclave.
“There’s a new kind of brazenness in declaring an intent to commit
unlawful attacks,” Kaiss said. “It appears impunity has emboldened
the Israeli military.”
Hospitals in the line of fire
Sweeping Israeli evacuation orders in recent weeks have sent over 1
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.
Such transfers involve coordination with the Lebanese army, health
ministry and U.N. peacekeeping force — a game of telephone, doctors
say, that creates potentially life-threatening delays. Admitting
patients isn’t easy either; the Sidon burn unit must discharge a
patient to free up a bed.
But the referrals keep coming, straining a health system already
crippled by economic collapse.
“The health system is on its knees,” Ziara said, as the hospital was
plunged into darkness until backup generators kicked in 10 minutes
later, a result of Lebanon’s long-running electricity crisis. “Now
front-line hospitals are lacking staff and supplies. They're
overwhelmed.”
Civilians search for answers
Lebanese civilians say that Israeli bombs can come without warning
and hit indiscriminately, leading to a growing feeling that
Palestinians in Gaza know well — that nowhere is safe.
Mohammad Qubaisi, 53, said his neighborhood 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.
Carrying his wife from the smoldering ruins, he shouted for his
sons. His eldest, Adam, called to him. But he couldn’t hear Jad.
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.
The Israeli military said it was targeting Hezbollah. Qubaisi pushed
back.
“These are civilian buildings, not military targets. They hit us and
we still don’t know why,” he said from the Sidon hospital. “We were
sleeping safely in our home, and look what happened to us.”
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