Last Friday, October 4, two public hospitals and one private hospital in Southern Lebanon were taken out of service when they suffered severe damage from repeated Israeli attacks on their vicinities.

Munis Kalakish, the director of Marjayoun Governmental Hospital in Southern Lebanon, told the Legal Agenda that the hospital had been shut down by an Israeli strike that targeted two ambulances at its entrance Friday morning. The attack killed seven medics, wounded five, damaged the hospital’s doors and windows, and sowed fear and panic among the medical crew and people in the area.

A statement issued by the administration of Meiss El Jabal Governmental Hospital announced the “evacuation of the hospital and cessation of operations in all its departments” on the same day as a result of “underhanded attacks and strikes by the Israeli enemy that targeted the hospital and its workers, as well as the use of internationally banned white phosphorus”.

In the evening, the Israeli offensive also targeted Salah Ghandour Hospital in Bint Jbeil. The strike hit the roof of the hospital and the doctors and nurses’ break room, wounding three doctors and six nurses, some of whom are in critical condition. Consequently, the hospital shut down.

Thus, with Qana Governmental Hospital and Bint Jbeil Governmental Hospital having already shut down on September 25, the number of hospitals south of the Litani that the Israeli aggression has taken out of service has risen to five. Beyond Southern Lebanon, Al-Murtada Hospital in Baalbek was temporarily shut down on September 28 after it was severely damaged by Israeli strikes, according to a Ministry of Health statement (the Legal Agenda has learned that the hospital has since been repaired and returned to service). On Thursday – i.e. before the Marjayoun hospital was damaged – Minister of Health Firass Abiad announced that 10 hospitals had already been damaged during the current aggression.

Marjayoun Hospital Shuts Down After Ambulances Are Targeted at Its Entrance

Kalakish said that Marjayoun hospital, as a result of three attacks in its vicinity prior to Friday’s attack and Israel’s warning to many villages in the district to evacuate, was already suffering from a shortage of medical, nursing, and laboratory staff because the workers cannot reach it or have been forced out of their towns. This had crippled the hospital’s functions and mission, and psychological pressure and fear gripped the remaining workers. He hopes that the hospital can reopen as it usually serves approximately 150,000 people in the Hasbaya and Marjayoun districts.

In a phone call with the Legal Agenda, one of Marjayoun’s mayors said that the town witnessed another wave of displacement on Friday, particularly among the elderly, sick, and families with children.

Meiss El Jabal Hospital Is Evacuated After Repeated Attacks

An employee in the Meiss El Jabal hospital said, in a phone call with the Legal Agenda, that the medical staff – which consists of 60 employees, including doctors, nurses, laboratory technicians, and emergency, intensive care, and logistics personnel – had not abandoned the hospital since the Israeli aggression began a year ago. The hospital was serving sick people, people wounded in the aggression, and Lebanese Army personnel in the border region, even though it lies in close proximity to the Manara settlement and the occupation army’s positions. The hospital had suffered previous strikes, the first of which hit its main courtyard at the beginning of the aggression. Israel has targeted the surrounding area constantly, sometimes using internationally banned white phosphorus, which caused choking among some of the employees.

To achieve its goal of shutting the hospital down, the offensive intentionally bombed and cut off the side road that hospital staff use, which runs through a valley between the towns of Shaqra and Meiss. The employees worked to repair it with their own hands using stone and soil so that they could come to work each day. The employees mentioned that the international force operating in Southern Lebanon (the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL) can no longer supply the hospital with water, as it had been doing since Israel laid siege to the area. It has also become very difficult for the citizens who were coming, escorted by the Lebanese Army, to donate diesel to reach the hospital.

The hospital’s administration explained, “Now that the siege on the forward border villages in the south has tightened, the roads and supply lines have been severed, medical, nursing, and administrative staff are struggling to arrive, and electricity, diesel, medicine, medical supplies, food, and water, have been cut off, we are sorry to announce that Meiss El Jabal Governmental Hospital has been evacuated and all its departments have shut down”.

The administration called upon “the international community and international health, humanitarian, and human-rights organizations to condemn the hostile acts perpetrated by the Israeli war machine and adopt a clear international stance on the enemy’s targeting of medical and health staff and emergency aid organizations, as well as the massacres being committed against civilians and the destruction of homes and healthcare facilities on top of their residents”.

On their part, the hospital’s employees implored, via the Legal Agenda, the Ministry of Health and the Lebanese state to heed their difficult circumstances and secure their salaries and continued work by transferring them to other, operational hospitals. That way, they can continue performing their humanitarian duty and medical mission. Securing their salaries is particularly important because they have no other income on which to rely and have been displaced from their homes.

Salah Ghandour Hospital Is Targeted and Emergency Aid Is Prevented from Reaching Its Staff

At 8:30 PM, the Israeli aggression targeted Salah Ghandour Hospital in Bint Jbeil, which lies in Southern Lebanon on the border with occupied Palestine, in a series of strikes that wounded nine medical staff, including three doctors in critical condition. This is the first direct targeting of a hospital building during the current aggression that broke out on 8 October 2023.

Israel bombed the hospital before the four-hour deadline that a person identifying himself as an Israeli officer gave in a phone call to multiple mayors in the region. The caller instructed hospitals, including this one, to evacuate on the pretext that they are being used for “non-medical activities”. “It’s your responsibility now,” he told them.

Information obtained by the Legal Agenda indicates that the call came at 5:16 PM. Salah Ghandour Hospital Director Dr. Muhammad Suleiman told us that the administration was informed of the warning at approximately 6 PM: “As we understood, it was directed at medics from the Islamic Health Organization’s (IHO) Civil Defense, who number 15, along with their vehicles. These medics have insisted on continuing their duties despite being targeted by the Israelis when they leave on rescue missions and suffering casualties, both dead and wounded, during any operation they conduct”. Before the four-hour deadline elapsed, Israel directly struck the hospital building’s roof with a projectile that fell among the doctors and nurses in their break room. Nine were wounded, some of them severely, while the IHO Civil Defense medics were in their vehicles outside the hospital preparing to depart.

Not only did Israel target the hospital, but it also prevented emergency medical aid from reaching the wounded. It did not respond to the efforts of UNIFIL, with which the Lebanese Army tried to coordinate to send personnel or allow Lebanese Red Cross teams to go to the hospital to evacuate the medical staff and wounded. According to Suleiman, after more than an hour had passed with no Lebanese Army or Red Cross personnel arriving, the administration found itself with only two options: “Either we let our wounded die and die with them as Israel would target the hospital again, or we risked leaving alone even though we had been informed that we would be targeted if we did so”. Hence, the 45 staff present – doctors, nurses, laboratory technicians, logisticians, and security guards, some of them critically wounded and on oxygen apparatuses – organized themselves into a convoy and left in their vehicles, taking with them some elderly and sick still in Bint Jbeil. They went to Tebnin Governmental Hospital, the closest medical center.

The only people remaining in Salah Ghandour Hospital are five security guards, who are protecting its property and equipment as it serves the entire Bint Jbeil district (inhabited by over 30,000 people) and some of the residents of villages and towns in the Tyre and Marjayoun districts, particularly the peripheral towns on the Bint Jbeil side. The hospital was also admitting artery and nerve surgery cases from as far as the Tyre city. As the only private hospital in the entire region, it plays a key role in healthcare during both peacetime and wartime. The administration told the Legal Agenda that the hospital has provided more than 25,000 health services during the current year-long Israeli aggression and said that it seeks to reopen, in coordination with the Lebanese Army, as soon as possible so that the region’s inhabitants are not left without any healthcare.

This article is an edited translation from Arabic.