BEIRUT (AP) — For nearly a week, ophthalmologist Elias Jarada has been working around the clock, trying to keep up with the influx of patients whose eyes were injured when a drone was hit by a ballistic missile. Pagers and wireless devices It exploded en masse all over Lebanon.
He lost count of the number of eye surgeries he performed at various hospitals, getting just two hours of sleep before he started the next operation. He saved the sight of some patients, but many would never see again.
“It was absolutely tragic when you see so many people with eye injuries arriving at the hospital at the same time, mostly young people, but also children and young women,” he told The Associated Press at a hospital in Beirut last week, struggling to hold back tears.
Lebanese hospitals and medical staff were overwhelmed after thousands of mobile phones belonging to the Hezbollah militant group exploded simultaneously on Tuesday and Wednesday last week, killing at least 39 people. Some 3,000 others were injured, some with life-changing disabilities. Israel is widely believed to have been behind the attack, though it has neither confirmed nor denied involvement.
Although the explosions appear to have targeted Hezbollah fighters, many of the victims were civilians. Many of those injured in the attack suffered injuries to their hands, faces and eyes because the devices received messages just before they exploded, so they were looking at them as they went off.
Authorities did not say how many people lost their eyes.
Veteran Lebanese ophthalmologists who have dealt with the aftermath of multiple wars, civil unrest and explosions said they had never seen anything like this before.
Jarada, a reformist lawmaker from southern Lebanon, said most of the patients sent to his ophthalmology hospital were young men with severe damage to one or both eyes. He said he found plastic and metal fragments in the eyes of some of these patients.
Four years ago, Powerful explosion hits Beirut port That blast, caused by the detonation of hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate that had been stored unsafely in a port warehouse, shattered windows and doors for miles around and sent cascades of glass shards streaming into the streets, setting buildings ablaze. Horrific injuries.
Jarada also treated people injured in the port explosion, but his experience with people injured by pagers and walkie-talkies was more intense because of the sheer number of people with eye injuries.
“It took, I think, 48 hours to contain the shock after the Beirut port explosion, while we have not reached the stage of containing the shock now,” Jarada said.
Jarada said he found it difficult to separate his work as a doctor from his feelings in the operating room.
“No matter what they taught you (in medical school) about staying away from others, I think in a situation like this, it is very difficult when you see the huge numbers of wounded. This is linked to the war on Lebanon and the war on humanity,” Jarada said.
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