"His fate is in God's hands," said hospital director Mona Abou Zeid , pointing to a middle-aged man who lay in a coma and would likely not survive longer than a week. He was unloading a goods lorry when the bomb fell, killing six other civilians instantly. His face was bruised and swollen beyond recognition. "But the worst thing," Mona added, "is to see the children like this."
The man was the latest casualty of an Israeli airstrike to arrive at Najdeh Hospital in Nabatieh – but he will not be the last. Explosions thundered in the green hills around Nabatieh as Israeli strikes left south Lebanon's second-largest city a ghost town in ruins. However, as Mona gave a tour of the hospital, she did not flinch, and yet she is acutely aware of the danger. "We're used to this," she shrugged. Inside Najdeh Hospital When Israel intensified its bombing of southern Lebanon on 2 March, most of the medical staff at Najdeh Hospital fled. Israeli attacks since then have killed at least 128 health workers and injured 332 others , damaged 16 hospitals, and pushed Lebanon's already strained healthcare system to the brink. The past week alone has seen 11 attacks.
But as the hospital's director, a sense of duty kept Mona at her post. She is living cheek by jowl with her remaining colleagues in an empty ward, and over the course of the war, they have become like family. They have spent almost every hour of the past two months together, doctors and nurses sharing every meal, playing cards and chess in the evenings. At night, they fall asleep to the sound of bombs. "Even before war, our mentality is that we are a family," said Mona. Their newfound closeness softens the strain of keeping the beleaguered hospital open while it receives a stream of casualties from Israel's attacks. It is also a way of dealing with loss. On too many occasions at Najdeh, medical staff have had to bury their colleagues and go back to work. Operating at a third of capacity With many of Najdeh's specialist surgeons and key medical staff seeking refuge in Beirut, the hospital is operating at about a third of its normal capacity – and can only treat emergency cases. For Dr Chafi Fouani, the hospital's medical director, daily life echoes the autumn of 2024, during the last intensification of the war between Israel and Hezbollah. "The same injuries, same weapons, same speeches, same routine… Sometimes even the same journalists," he said wryly. But Dr Chafi did highlight one disturbing difference: this time, the rate of civilian casualties was higher, despite a lower intensity of Israeli strikes. Almost every day, the hospital receives women and children – civilian casualties of a war that Israel insists is solely against Hezbollah. Mona recalled a recent patient, a small girl whose lower half had been shredded by shrapnel. At this point, her eyes welled up. She has a daughter of her own. Over a million displaced On another occasion, an airstrike on the nearby village of Deir al-Zahrani wiped out an entire family except the two small children, leaving them orphaned. "Solidarity," Mona replied simply when asked what drove her to keep working. "It's our land, our people, they need us to stay here." For the few families that remain in Nabatieh and its surrounding villages, Najdeh Hospital is a lifeline. Israeli displacement orders have forced over a million people – more than a fifth of the population – from their homes. As in many displaced areas, the country's fragile healthcare system is a vital public service that allows people to continue living in their hometowns. Health workers say Israel's attacks on hospitals and paramedics – which are supposed to be protected under international law – are deliberate, and part of a broader strategy to depopulate south Lebanon. "They know everything," said Dr Chafi. "They have the technology to distinguish between medical and military targets. This is not by chance or by mistake, it's to send a message." Israel has repeatedly alleged that Hezbollah uses hospitals and ambulances to conceal and transport weapons, claims it says justify attacks on medical infrastructure. Yet the evidence presented has often been contested.
In one instance, the Israeli military accused the Bint Jbeil Governmental Hospital of being used for military activity. It later admitted that a photograph it had ostensibly provided as evidence had not been taken at the hospital.
The attacks on Lebanon's healthcare sector have continued in recent days, despite a ceasefire agreed in April.
According to Lebanon's Ministry of Health, three hospitals in southern Lebanon were struck by Israeli attacks in less than a week, killing nine people and wounding more than 150.
On Wednesday, an Israeli strike hit the immediate vicinity of a public hospital in Tebnine, just days after attacks near the Hiram and Jabal Amel hospitals in Tyre.
A strike beside Jabal Amel Hospital on Monday killed four people and injured 127 others, most of them medical staff. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The New Arab (@thenewarab) Another attack, recorded on video, captured a grim pattern that medics say has become all too familiar. Emergency crews were treating casualties from an earlier strike in Deir Qanoun al-Nahr when the area was hit again. As an ambulance pulled up, another bomb fell, killing two paramedics and a child. 'A psychological war' Double-tap strikes have become a grim reality for paramedics. Sometimes, they are targeted in triple-tap strikes while trying to rescue their own colleagues, who were themselves responding to a previous attack. Paramedics have started wearing body cameras to document potential war crimes – and their own deaths. "This is a psychological war, and the aim [of the attacks] is to create terror for the ambulance crews," said Mohammed Suleiman, head of the Nabatieh emergency services organisation. The paramedic crews living at Najdeh Hospital have seen some of the worst violence of this war. In their cramped lodgings, a yellow canary trilled in its cage. Shisha smoke hung in the air. Mohammed has had to bury his own colleagues, too. But one day in March, he rushed to a strike site to find that one of the bodies he had to collect belonged to his 16-year-old son. Joud Suleiman and his friend Ali Jaber were both paramedics, dressed clearly in their uniforms, when they were targeted on their motorcycle while delivering food aid to vulnerable residents. "Even if we are killed, as long as there are civilians here, we will help," Mohammed told The New Arab . He wears a pin with a photo of Joud on his chest, and flowers lie scattered where the boy used to sleep. "But hopefully our team will have no more casualties," he joked with his crew, who laughed in reply. Somehow, they kept morale high in spite of their situation, or maybe because of it. Mohammed would lose more of his teammates. Since speaking to The New Arab in early April, three more have been killed by Israeli strikes. None of these cases is being investigated, and there will likely be no consequences. After the tour of the hospital, Mona led the way back to her office. Under its cold lighting, she keeps a quote, written in green ink on her wall: "Were it not for a glimmer of hope…" Tomorrow, she and the rest of the medical staff at Najdeh Hospital will go back to work, partly out of a sense of duty and partly for each other. Alex Martin Astley is a freelance journalist based in Beirut, covering conflict, foreign policy, and social justice issues Follow him on X: @AlexMAstley