Lebanon conflict at ‘critical point’ with more than 3,000 confirmed dead

This article is published in association with United Nations.

The war in Lebanon has now killed more than 3,000 people in Lebanon amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes and Hezbollah missile hits in Israel, UN humanitarians said on Wednesday.

According to the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, the updated death toll – which includes fatalities recorded since 8 October 2023 – is 58 per cent higher than the 1,900 people killed during the 34-day conflict in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah.

“Across the country, at least 71 people were killed in airstrikes on 1 November alone,” OCHA said, warning that the conflict has reached a “critical point”. Because of the conflict an estimated 1.3 million people have been displaced across Lebanon and into neighbouring countries.

OCHA warned that the humanitarian situation continues to worsen because of intensified Israeli airstrikes and displacement orders – particularly in Haret Saida in southwest Lebanon and Baalbek in the east of the country.

Vital UN support for burns centre

Amid new Israeli airstrikes reported in Gaza and Lebanon on Wednesday morning, UN humanitarians delivered vital trauma treatment supplies to Lebanon’s sole specialist burns hospital, where the caseload has spiked because of the massive escalation in violence.Beit Lahiya town in northern Gaza and Nuseirat refugee camp in the centre of the enclave were the focus of dawn strikes, local media reported. In southern Lebanon, Israeli fire hit Tyre and Nabatieh governorate, with at least 20 killed in the coastal town of Barja, the authorities said.

In support of medical teams in Lebanon, the World Health Organization (WHO) provided enough emergency surgical kits and supplies on Tuesday to treat 50 patients at Beirut’s Geitaoui Hospital, with support from the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) and the European Union.

The caseload at the hospital was already “very high” before Israeli strikes intensified across Lebanon in late September, in response to Hezbollah rocket fire on targets in Israel, “but now the current conflict has added another layer, another complexity”, said Dr Abdinasir Abubakar, WHO’s Lebanon Representative.

Children not spared

Victims from airstrikes in Lebanon “overwhelmed the hospital”, the WHO official explained, insisting that it was critical to continue supporting “the only burns centre that’s available in the country. Off the 40 burns patients treated so far “25 per cent of them are children”, he said.

Initially equipped with 10 beds, the Geitaoui Hospital burns centre now has 25 beds, providing critical care to severely injured patients.

There are enough new trauma kits to treat 50 patients twice; each kit has two modules, one with medications and another with specialist burns treatments and dressings.

Expressing solidarity with Lebanon’s health professionals, the top UN aid coordinator in the country condemned ongoing military targeting of medical personnel and infrastructure, including ambulances which are “very much under attack”.

“We need to be supporting them with supplies, we need to be supporting them also need with advocacy,” said Imran Riza, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon. “There have been great violations of international humanitarian law that we are seeing. So, we need to make sure these are not happening, that health care workers can do what they’re there for, helping people and saving lives.”

Aid obstacles persist

Meanwhile in Gaza, UN aid coordination office, OCHA, reported that for almost a month, all attempts by aid teams to deliver food to people in the besieged areas of North Gaza governorate have been blocked by the Israeli authorities.

In central and southern Gaza, more than 100 kitchens producing 400,000 meals a day are at risk of shutting down owing to supply shortages, OCHA said in an update.

Healthcare conditions in north Gaza remain critical, with Kamal Adwan hospital hit twice in the past week and the delivery of life-saving supplies to the Al Awda Hospital denied.

“The Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza has become a besieged war zone,” said UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Middle East and North Africa Regional Director Adele Khodr.

Condemning the decimation of specialist care for newborns across Gaza, Ms. Khodr noted that Kamal Adwan’s neonatal intensive care unit is “the last remaining [facility] in the north”.

Access to the hospital remains “incredibly difficult”, the UNICEF official noted, adding that children who were treated there had been reportedly killed and injured in this week’s attacks. “Oxygen and water supplies have been damaged, disrupting critical care for the few still clinging to life inside,” she said.

Newborn care smashed

According to UNICEF, at least 4,000 babies in the enclave have likely been cut off from lifesaving newborn care in the past year “because of sustained attacks on the hospitals earnestly trying to keep them alive”, amid power cuts and “woefully inadequate” deliveries of fuel to power hospitals. “This has been especially deadly in the northern parts of the Gaza Strip.”

During his first visit on Tuesday to the enclave since Israel launched its latest military operation in the north a month ago, the top UN aid coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory appealed for an end to the suffering.

“This is not a place for humans to survive,” said Muhannad Hadi, from the Al-Mamouniya School in Gaza City, run by the UN agency that assists Palestine refugee, UNRWA. “This must end. This misery must end. This war must end. This is beyond imagination.”

Explosive hazards: An ‘imminent threat’ 

More than 42 million tons of rubble and a “large concentration of explosive hazards” also pose “an imminent threat to civilians” in Gaza, OCHA said, citing mine action staff, adding that the entry of specialized personnel and equipment for the disposal of ordnance remains restricted.

“Across all five Gaza governorates, Explosive Remnants of War (ERW) contamination is likely to be both on the surface and sub-surface, involving not only land service ammunition (projectiles, mortars, rockets, missiles, grenades and landmines), but also deep-buried bombs, as well as weapons and ammunition caches,” the OCHA update noted.