‘It was like an earthquake’: Israeli strike kills 12 medics in bloody attack on Lebanon’s healthcare system
The Israeli strike on the healthcare centre was so huge that it felt like an earthquake. Without warning, the missile tore through the four-storey building in southern Lebanon, punching open concrete floors, eviscerating every wall, and gouging out a multistorey crater in the ground.
The dozen medics based there, whose job it was to respond to the injured across 20 nearby villages, were finishing dinner. There was nowhere to hide.
“The bodies were everywhere, in pieces,” says Ali Shaimi, 51, a first responder with the Hezbollah-linked Islamic Health Authority, which ran the centre. He is speaking to The Independent beside the skeletal remains of the building, which is still partly on fire and sending acrid, choking smoke into the air.
Describing the attack as like an “earthquake”, he says he rushed to tend to the wounded, only to realise there were none.
Abbas Hijazi, 36, another rescuer who was in a building across the street when the explosion happened, said the force of the blast sm..
