An Associated Press team was among journalists taken on a tour inside a hospital in Beirut’s southern suburb where the Israeli army claimed without offering evidence that Hezbollah was storing hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold in tunnels underneath.
The Sahel General Hospital had already been emptied of most patients and staff following intense bombardment of the area in recent days, and the few remaining ones were hastily evacuated late Monday after the Israeli claim.
“We have been living in terror for the last 24 hours,” hospital director Mazen Alame said Tuesday. “There is nothing under the hospital.”
Journalists were taken to the two floors under the hospital, the first of which had two rooms for surgeries and the other had oxygen bottles stored inside. The second floor included a morgue with six doors in one room and a giant water tank in another.
Alame said the hospital has no affiliation with any political group or religious institution and has been working under the supervision of Lebanon’s Health Ministry since its founding.
Israel has made similar claims about tunnels used by Hamas fighters under hospitals in Gaza. Omar Mneimne, a doctor at the hospital’s emergency department, said he fears a repeat scenario in Lebanon.
“We fear that,” Mneimne said, adding that the international community should act to defend health facilities in Lebanon. “It’s extremely hard. It’s very stressful for the community.”
