Lebanese Emergency Services Are Overwhelmed and Need Better Gear to Save Lives in Wartime

Search and rescue team members try to find victims following an overnight raid by the Israel army on the Palestinian camp of Ain el-Hilweh, in Sidon, Lebanon, 01 October 2024. (EPA)
Search and rescue team members try to find victims following an overnight raid by the Israel army on the Palestinian camp of Ain el-Hilweh, in Sidon, Lebanon, 01 October 2024. (EPA)
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Lebanese Emergency Services Are Overwhelmed and Need Better Gear to Save Lives in Wartime

Search and rescue team members try to find victims following an overnight raid by the Israel army on the Palestinian camp of Ain el-Hilweh, in Sidon, Lebanon, 01 October 2024. (EPA)
Search and rescue team members try to find victims following an overnight raid by the Israel army on the Palestinian camp of Ain el-Hilweh, in Sidon, Lebanon, 01 October 2024. (EPA)

When Israel bombed buildings outside the southern Lebanese city of Sidon, Mohamed Arkadan and his team rushed to an emergency unlike anything they had ever seen.

About a dozen apartments had collapsed onto the hillside they once overlooked, burying more than 100 people. Even after 17 years with the civil defense forces of one of the world's most war-torn nations, Arkadan was shocked at the destruction. By Monday afternoon — about 24 hours after the bombing — his team had pulled more than 40 bodies — including children's — from the rubble, along with 60 survivors.

The children's bodies broke his heart, said Arkadan, 38, but his team of over 30 first responders' inability to help further pained him more. Firetrucks and ambulances haven’t been replaced in years. Rescue tools and equipment are in short supply. His team has to buy their uniforms out of pocket.

An economic crisis that began in 2019 and a massive 2020 port explosion have left Lebanon struggling to provide basic services such as electricity and medical care. Political divisions have left the country of 6 million without a president or functioning government for more than two years, deepening a national sense of abandonment reaching down to the men whom the people depend on in emergencies.

“We have zero capabilities, zero logistics,” Arkadan said. “We have no gloves, no personal protection gear.”

War has upended Lebanon again Israel’s intensified air campaign against Hezbollah has upended the country. Over 1,000 people have been killed in Israeli strikes since Sept. 17, nearly a quarter of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes, sleeping on beaches and streets.

The World Health Organization said over 30 primary health care centers around Lebanon’s affected areas have been closed.

On Tuesday, Israel said it began a limited ground operation against Hezbollah and warned people to evacuate several southern communities, promising further escalation.

Lebanon is “grappling with multiple crises, which have overwhelmed the country’s capacity to cope,” said Imran Riza, the UN's humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon, who said the UN had allocated $24 million in emergency funding for people affected by the fighting.

Exhausted medical staff are struggling to cope with the daily influx of new patients. Under government emergency plans, hospitals and medical workers have halted non-urgent operations.

Government shelters are full

In the southern province of Tyre, many doctors have fled along with residents. In Nabatiyeh, the largest province in southern Lebanon, first responders say they have been working around the clock since last week to reach hundreds of people wounded in bombings that hit dozens of villages and towns, often many on the same day.

After the bombing in Sidon nearly 250 first responders joined Arkadan's team, including a specialized search-and-rescue unit from Beirut, some 45 kilometers (28 miles) to the north. His team didn't have the modern equipment needed to pull people from a disaster.

“We used traditional tools, like scissors, cables, shovels,” Arkadan said.

“Anyone here?” rescuers shouted through the gaps in mounds of rubble, searching for survivors buried deeper underground. One excavator removed the debris slowly, to avoid shaking the heaps of bricks and mangled steel.

Many sought refuge in the ancient city of Tyre, 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the border with Israel, thinking it was likely to be spared bombardment. More than 8,000 people arrived, said Hassan Dbouk, the head of its disaster management unit.

He said that there were no pre-positioned supplies, such as food parcels, hygiene kits and mattresses, and moving trucks now is fraught with danger. Farmers have been denied access to their land because of the bombings and the municipality is struggling to pay salaries.

Meanwhile, garbage is piling up on the streets. The number of municipal workers has shrunk from 160 to 10.

“The humanitarian situation is catastrophic,” Dbouk said.

Wissam Ghazal, the health ministry official in Tyre, said in one hospital, only five of 35 doctors have remained. In Tyre province, eight medics, including three with a medical organization affiliated with Hezbollah, were killed over two days, he said.

Over the weekend, the city itself became a focus of attacks.

Israeli warplanes struck near the port city’s famed ruins, along its beaches and in residential and commercial areas, forcing thousands of residents to flee. At least 15 civilians were killed Saturday and Sunday, including two municipal workers, a soldier and several children, all but one from two families.

It took rescuers two days to comb through the rubble of a home in the Kharab neighborhood in the city’s center, where a bomb had killed nine members of the al-Samra family.

Six premature babies in incubators around the city were moved to Beirut. The city’s only doctor, who looked after them, couldn’t move between hospitals under fire, Ghazal said.

One of the district’s four hospitals shut after sustaining damage from a strike that affected its electricity supply and damaged the operations room. In two other hospitals, glass windows were broken. For now, the city’s hospitals are receiving more killed than wounded.

“But you don’t know what will happen when the intensity of attacks increases. We will definitely need more.”

Making do with what they have

Hussein Faqih, head of civil defense in the Nabatiyeh province, said that “we are working in very difficult and critical circumstances because the strikes are random. We have no protection. We have no shields, no helmets, no extra hoses. The newest vehicle is 25 years old. We are still working despite all that.”

At least three of his firefighters’ team were killed in early September. Ten have been injured since then. Of 45 vehicles, six were hit and are now out of service.

Faqih said he is limiting his team’s search-and-rescue missions to residential areas, keeping them away from forests or open areas where they used to put out fires.

“These days, there is something difficult every day. Body parts are everywhere, children, civilians and bodies under rubble,” Faqih said. Still, he said, he considers his job to be the safety net for the people.

“We serve the people, and we will work with what we have.”



Amr Moussa to Asharq Al-Awsat: Mubarak Was a Patriot

Hosni Mubarak and Amr Moussa during a summit in Cairo in 2000. AFP file photo
Hosni Mubarak and Amr Moussa during a summit in Cairo in 2000. AFP file photo
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Amr Moussa to Asharq Al-Awsat: Mubarak Was a Patriot

Hosni Mubarak and Amr Moussa during a summit in Cairo in 2000. AFP file photo
Hosni Mubarak and Amr Moussa during a summit in Cairo in 2000. AFP file photo

Former Secretary-General of the Arab League Amr Moussa told Asharq Al-Awsat that the first ten years of the current century were disastrous in Egypt. Hosni Mubarak had aged and lost interest in governing the country.

Mubarak and Hereditary Rule

Asked about Mubarak’s ties with former Presidents Anwar Sadat and Gamal Abdel Nasser, Moussa said: “Mubarak believed that what Anwar Sadat had done was right. And he used to love Abdel Nasser a lot.”

Asharq Al-Awsat asked him if the end of Mubarak’s term was painful. Moussa replied: “Yes of course. He wasn’t as bad as pictured. This man was a patriot and knew what he was doing. He wasn’t at all naïve.”

“The issue that his son could become his heir was not accepted by anyone ... Mubarak did not want for his son to rule Egypt, which is not an easy task. It’s a huge and very complicated country, and the presidency requires a lot of experience,” Moussa said.

Mubarak Loved Elegance and Joking

Was Mubarak interested in his personal elegance? Moussa replied: "Yes. He knew what to wear with what, and he valued elegance greatly.”

“He also had a way of looking at people, and he was often right about that.”

"He was Egyptian par excellence. He loved sarcasm and listening to jokes. He would laugh very energetically and loudly when something amused him, surrounded by a group of humorous people. And then, suddenly, the president would return,” said Moussa.

"He used to wake up early and sit in a pleasant little kiosk in the garden, reading the newspapers and the reports sent to him by various agencies, taking his time. After finishing, he would be fully briefed on many different matters."

Policymaker

Moussa had sometimes implied that he was a policymaker, not just an executor of policies. “First of all, the Foreign Minister must be one of the policy makers ... If he is merely an executor, then he will have no role in the history of diplomacy or in politics, nor will he have the influence that a Foreign Minister is supposed to have like taking initiative, thinking, and acting quickly,” said Moussa.

“This, in my opinion, was the case. However, I cannot claim that I was one of the makers of Egyptian policy. But I certainly contributed to many political steps and political thinking. For example, what were the priorities? A priority was to make the Middle East a nuclear-free zone. This was the work of Egyptian diplomacy, which I headed, and I was committed to this issue.”

Advice to Assad on Lebanon Pullout

Asked if Mubarak had advised Syrian President Bashar Assad to withdraw his forces from Lebanon after the assassination of Lebanon’s Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Moussa said: "I don’t know, I was Arab League Secretary General back then. I advised.”

But Moussa said that when he went to Beirut to offer his condolences to the Hariri family, he visited Damascus to meet with Assad. “I asked him if he was ready to withdraw the Syrian army. He said: Yes,” according to Moussa, who also said Assad clearly stated that the Arab League chief can officially announce the Syrian stance to the media.

Yet, as soon as he returned to Cairo, the Syrian government spokesman denied Moussa’s claim that Assad had promised a pullout of Syrian forces from Lebanon. The regime later retracted his statement.

Asked about the reasons for Hariri’s assassination, Moussa said that the former prime minister was “bigger than Lebanon. He was a huge Arab personality that could have met the president of the United States and of France anytime he wanted.”

Moussa confirmed that Hariri had complained to him about Syria’s relationship with him.