Shrapnel in eyes, fingers split: Lebanon medics treating waves of wounded

Doctors in Lebanon have spoken of horrific eye wounds and finger amputations, a day after paging devices exploded across the country, killing 12 people and wounding up to 2,800.

"The injuries were mainly to the eyes and hands, with finger amputations, shrapnel in the eyes — some people lost their sight," said doctor Joelle Khadra on Wednesday, who was working in emergency at Beirut's Hotel-Dieu hospital.

Hundreds of wireless paging devices belonging to people across Lebanon exploded simultaneously on Tuesday, hours after Israel said it was broadening the aims of its genocidal war on Gaza to include Lebanon.

On Wednesday, walkie-talkies and other gadgets exploded across Lebanon again, killing some 20 people and wounding 450 others.

Khadra told the AFP news agency that Hotel-Dieu, located in the Lebanese capital's Christian-majority Ashrafieh district, treated about 80 wounded.

Around 20 "were admitted to intensive care immediately and were put on ventilators to ensure they wouldn't suffocate due to the swelling in their faces", she said.

"The rest are going one after the other to the operating room. Today, we have 55 surgeries," she added, wearing her white doctor's coat over her blue scrubs.

Doctors, nurses, paramedics, charity workers, teachers and office administrators and an unknown number of Lebanese have been using pagers in Lebanon.

Israel's Lebanon push

The Lebanese government and Hezbollah have blamed Israel for attacks and mass casualties. Tel Aivv has not confirmed or denied role in the attacks but it has a history of targeting people in the region and abroad using cyber and other warfare.

Hezbollah has traded near daily cross-border fire with Israel as the latter continues its genocidal war on Gaza. The Lebanese group has vowed to retaliate for the pager blasts.

Tel Aviv has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians and wounded nearly 100,000 others in nearly 11 months of war.

But experts and some studies say this is just a tip of the iceberg and the actual Palestinian death toll could be around 200,000.

Some 10,000 Palestinians are feared buried under the rubble of their bombed homes. Another 10,000 have been abducted by Israel and dumped in Israeli jails and torture chambers.

Hezbollah says its attacks on Israel will only stop when Israel ends its war on Palestinians. Meanwhile, Israel has vowed a new phase of war.

Speaking to Israeli troops on Wednesday, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said, "We are at the start of a new phase in the war — it requires courage, determination and perseverance."

He made no mention of the exploding devices but praised the work of Israel’s army and security agencies, saying "the results are very impressive."

The attacks — which were widely believed to be carried out by Israel targeting Hezbollah and Lebanese civilians — have hiked fears that the two sides' low intensity skirmishes could escalate into an all-out war.

'Out of this world'

A doctor at another hospital in Beirut said he worked all night and that the injuries were "out of this world — never seen anything like it".

"It's beyond what can be described," he said, requesting anonymity because he was not authorised by the hospital to speak to the media.

"We have a lot of injuries with amputated fingers" because people were holding the pagers in one or both hands, he said, while some people who had been sitting on the floor also had wounded feet.

But the "most devastating" wounds were when the pagers blew up in people's faces, he said, citing up to 40 patients with eye injuries, most of them severe.

Around three-quarters of those patients "lost one eye completely, and the other eye is either somewhat salvageable or barely salvageable", he said, while "15 to 20 percent... lost both eyes in a way that's irreparable".

"A lot of colleagues have been saying this is worse compared to the August 4... (eye) injuries that we saw," he said.

On August 4, 2020, a catastrophic explosion at Beirut's port killed more than 220 people and wounded some 6,500, with several hundred at least suffering ocular injuries and some people even blinded in one eye by flying shards of glass and other debris.

The doctor also reported "a lot of burns and foreign bodies — metallic pieces of pagers being retrieved from patients' eyes, brains, faces, sinuses, from their insides, from their bones".

He said there was "a lot of tissue loss, fingers lost — things that we can't repair, we can't replace".

Health Minister Firass Abiad said on Wednesday that two children were among 12 people killed, while almost 300 people were "in critical condition", some suffering facial injuries and brain haemorrhaging.

Of some 1,800 people who were admitted to hospital, "460 needed operations on their eyes, face or limbs, particularly the hands", he said, noting "multiple finger or hand amputations".

Lebanon, enduring a grinding five-year economic crisis, received a delivery of medical aid from Iraq on Wednesday morning, while doctors and nurses from Iran's Red Crescent also arrived to assist, Lebanon's official National News Agency reported, and Jordan said it sent aid and medical supplies.

The office of the United Nations special coordinator for Lebanon said on X that "praise must go to the medical corps and emergency professionals", adding the importance of their work after the pager blasts "cannot be overstated".