Eyewitnesses recount three deadly Israeli strikes on medics in southern Lebanon

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NABATIYEH, Lebanon (AP) — It was late morning when two ambulances slowed to a stop outside of the village of Mayfadoun in southern Lebanon.

Having heard minutes earlier on Wednesday that Israel had attacked two other ambulances, hitting one and then the other after it showed up to help the first, they didn't hesitate before rushing to the scene. They knew the danger, and they found a hellscape.

The first two ambulances were destroyed, their tires blown and windows shattered. Six of their eight crew members were covered in blood and lying in the road or the back of one vehicle. A paramedic in one of the driver’s seats, blood pulsing from his abdomen, was cradling a colleague in his lap, pleading with him to stay conscious.

“I felt sick. I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Mohammed Jaber, 43, told The Associated Press on Friday from his emergency team's headquarters in Nabatiyeh, where team members dozed on foam mattresses. A 10-day truce in the Israel-Hezbollah war delivered the exhausted team a rare respite from the drum line of explosions.

Jaber said he and the others hurried to load the most critically injured into their working ambulances. As team leader Mahdi Abu Zaid ran to close the doors, they, too, were attacked.

The three strikes, which killed four paramedics and wounded six others, is the latest example of Israel's willingness to target Lebanon's health sector.

Such attacks became a contentious issue during the 2024 Israel-Hezbollah war, as Israel accused Hezbollah, as it did Hamas in Gaza, of using Lebanese hospitals as cover for militant activities — a claim denied by Hezbollah and the Lebanese Health Ministry.

The attacks haven’t slowed, as humanitarian agencies report that an average of two health workers have been killed every day in this war before a truce took hold Friday.

In response to questions about the Mayfadoun strikes, the Israeli army did not repeat its previous accusations about Hezbollah’s use of health facilities. Instead, it said it was aware of reports about the ambulance attacks and “the incident is under review.”

The attack on the third team of ambulances to make a rescue attempt Wednesday happened as they were still assessing the first two crews’ injuries, less than six minutes after their arrival.

An Israeli drone smashed the vehicles' windows and struck 30-year-old Abu Zaid, throwing him to the ground, his colleagues told the AP. Abu Zaid, who had a 4-year-old son and sold spices and nuts when he wasn’t volunteering as a paramedic, was later proclaimed dead on arrival at al-Najda Hospital.

Their accounts of what happened match footage captured by a GoPro camera that was strapped on one of the paramedics. The video shows a barrage of fire hitting the ambulance as medical workers administered first aid to two colleagues in blood-soaked clothes, one taking shallow breaths through an oxygen mask.

After the third attack, a fourth team of rescuers finally managed to reach the stranded medics and evacuate the wounded without being targeted.

The attacks on the ambulances have drawn condemnation, including from the United Nations’ human rights office, which said it was “shocked" and warned that intentionally targeting medics constituted a war crime.

For the emergency workers involved, it was the latest example of Israel's efforts to wreck southern Lebanon's health system as its army extends security control to the Litani River, some 20 miles (30 kilometers) into Lebanese territory, in a bid to protect its northern towns from Iran-backed Hezbollah.

“They should be targeting fighters, where the fighting is happening, at the border,” said Jaber. “Why target medics and civilians? So that life becomes unbearable and people tell Hezbollah to give up?”

The Lebanese Health Ministry has recorded at least 100 medical workers killed since Israel launched its bombing campaign and ground invasion in Lebanon in retaliation for Hezbollah firing missiles across the border on March 2, after Israel and the United States began strikes against Iran.

“This war is different than all the other wars,” said Mohammed Suleiman, the chief paramedic for Nabatiyeh Emergency Services.

His own son, 16-year-old Joud — who had been tagging along and helping on missions since he was a young child — was killed with a fellow paramedic in an Israeli strike on their motorcycle on March 24 — the unit’s first casualties since its founding in 2002.

“I always had my fears, but I believed that as a neutral organization with no connection to politics, we would be safe, off-limits," he said.

Apart from its armed wing, Hezbollah is one of Lebanon's most powerful political parties and runs a sprawling network of civilian institutions including hospitals and schools.

The first two teams of paramedics attacked on Wednesday were dispatched by the Islamic Health Committee, a major health care provider affiliated with Hezbollah, and the Risala Scout Association, a paramedic group affiliated with Hezbollah's ally, the Amal movement.

Dozens of paramedics from both groups have been killed in these six weeks of war. The main Islamic Health Committee clinic in the village of Jibsheet, near Nabatiyeh, was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike last month, one of 59 primary health care centers shuttered due to Israeli attacks, according to the World Health Organization.

The U.N. health agency also denounced Israeli strikes that twice in a matter of three days this week hit Lebanon’s Tebnine Government Hospital, one of the region’s busiest trauma centers, wounding 11 medical workers, damaging the emergency department and pharmacy and ruining critical equipment like ventilators and monitors.

With the ceasefire in effect on Friday, the Nabatiyeh medics rented a tow truck and ventured back to the roadside in Mayfadoun where they had been attacked. The three ambulances sat there, peppered with shrapnel, and the asphalt was stained with blood.

They hauled Abu Zeid's mangled ambulance to a public square in Nabatiyeh, where they said they hoped it would serve as a reminder.

“We want this vehicle to bear witness,” said Mahdi Sadeq, a coordinator for the service. “To bear witness to what happened, to what this war has done to our profession."