Israel carried out one of the deadliest operations in Lebanon since the end of the country's civil war in 1990, bombing more than 100 targets across the country in just 10 minutes on Wednesday. The strikes killed over 300 people and wounded 1,165, according to Lebanon's civil defence, with the death toll expected to rise as more bodies are recovered.
Residents and Lebanese officials said the attacks primarily killed civilians, with bombs hitting densely packed residential areas of Beirut. Lebanon's prime minister, Nawaf Salam, accused Israel of targeting 'densely populated residential neighbourhoods' and killing unarmed civilians in breach of international law. The Israeli military said it had struck Hezbollah 'command and control centres' in what it called 'Operation Eternal Darkness'.
Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a surgeon at the American University of Beirut Medical College, said the hospital received about 70 wounded people at once, many critically injured. 'The youngest was an 11-month-old. I had to operate on him just to relieve some pressure in the head,' he said. Dr Firass Abiad, a surgeon and former health minister, described crush injuries, elderly patients, and a woman who had both legs amputated. 'There was a 90-year-old who I just left a bit ago. He passed away from his wounds,' Abiad said.
In the Barbour neighbourhood of central Beirut, Omar Rakha woke up face down on the street after the building next to his was destroyed by two Israeli bombs. 'I really didn't think something like this would happen here,' he said, his head wrapped in a blood-stained bandage. First responders worked to find people trapped under the rubble, but an emergency worker said they had not yet found any survivors, only pieces of people.
The death toll from the strikes surpassed that of Beirut's 2020 port explosion, one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history. The attacks came as more than 1.1 million people have been displaced by Israeli bombing over the last month.
