Rescue workers arrive in a Beirut neighbourhood targeted by air strikes.
This article is published in association with United Nations.
With Lebanon still reeling from Israel’s devastating airstrikes on 8 April, UN humanitarians reported new fears of attacks on ambulances and looming food shortages in the south of the country on Friday.
Speaking from Beirut, where he witnessed Wednesday’s attacks first-hand, the World Health Organization (WHO)’s representative in the country Dr. Abdinasir Abubakar, said that according to the latest figures from Lebanon’s Ministry of Health some 300 people were killed in the strikes – one of the highest single-day death tolls since the renewal of full-scale hostilities between Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants on 2 March. A further 1,150 were injured.
“Many more people actually are still missing,” Dr Abubakar told reporters in Geneva. “They’re believed to be under the rubble.”
Many body parts are also waiting to be identified, he said.
Threat to ambulance crews
The UN health agency official also spoke of a warning received from Israel on Friday morning that “ambulances will be attacked as well.”
He said that Israel had been warning about “the use of ambulances by Hezbollah”.
WHO has insisted that while healthcare should not be militarised, misuse of health facilities or ambulances does not justify attacking them.
“The healthcare workers, the facilities, the ambulances are all protected under international humanitarian law,” the senior medic said.
“Unless we have these services available, we will not be able to save lives.”
On Thursday WHO also received a warning that Israeli evacuation orders have been expanded in the Jneh area of Beirut which includes “two major hospitals that are managing the mass casualty [event], Rafik Hariri and Al Zahara hospital.”
The facilities are currently operating at full capacity. Dr. Abubakar stressed the impossibility of potentially having to move the 450 patients, including some 50 in intensive care after having sustained injuries in Wednesday’s bombing, out of the health facilities.
Evacuation impossible
“We have decided not to evacuate because we don’t have any other place to evacuate them [to], actually,” he said.
The UN health agency official added that overnight “we received some feedback saying that these hospitals will not be attacked…whether that will materialize or not we will see.”
Amid the surge in emergency cases, the WHO official noted that even before Wednesday’s mass casualty event the country did not have enough medical supplies to last even one month.
The 8 April airstrikes took place just hours after a ceasefire was announced between the United States and Iran.
Hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah have continued, while according to media reports Iran said on Friday that it would not take part in peace talks planned for Saturday in Pakistan if the ceasefire was not extended to Lebanon.
© UNHCR/Houssam Hariri
Firefighters survey a scene of destruction in Beirut, Lebanon.
More upheaval
UN refugee agency (UNHCR) spokesperson Eujin Byun said that families who had already fled earlier hostilities in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon – some of whom had begun contemplating returns after mixed signals about a ceasefire – were now once again uprooted.
Areas previously considered safe were struck on Wednesday, she said, “triggering panic and forcing people to flee for the second or third time.”
Ms. Byun added that the destruction of the Qasmiyeh Bridge, a major artery connecting the southern cities of Sidon and Tyre, has made “moving between northern and southern Lebanon much more difficult.”
“For many families from southern villages, return is no longer possible as the entire communities have been partially or completely destroyed,” she said.
The UNHCR spokesperson stressed that some 150,000 people are estimated to still be in the South and that humanitarian access to them is essential.
“They need a safe route to flee if they are forced to again,” she insisted.
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Worsening food security
The World Food Programme (WFP)’s director in Lebanon Allison Oman, who was on a convoy to a border village in the south earlier this week, gave reporters an eyewitness account of the situation there.
“What I saw really stayed with me,” she recounted, describing a local bakery which “had the glass front destroyed just an hour before we’d been there, and they were already sweeping up the glass and had already fired up the ovens because they were waiting for the wheat flour that we were bringing in on the convoy.”
“Their food stocks were very low, and it was clear that this convoy was much awaited…it was essential to help them keep going,” she said.
Ms. Oman warned that the situation is “rapidly becoming a food security crisis,” with food prices rising across the country.
“In just one month, the price of vegetables has surged by more than 20 per cent, bread prices have increased by 17 per cent…for families who are already struggling, this is deeply concerning,” she said, highlighting a “very worrying combination” where prices are rising, incomes are disrupted and demand is increasing.
The WFP official also stressed that in the conflict-affected areas in southern parts of Lebanon, more than 80 per cent of markets are no longer functioning.
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