BEIRUT (AP) — For nearly a week, ophthalmologist Elias Jaradeh has been working around the clock, trying to cope with the flood of patients whose eyes were injured when Pagers and walkie-talkies exploded en masse throughout Lebanon.
He has lost track of how many eye surgeries he has performed in different hospitals. He survived on two hours of sleep before he could start the next operation. He was able to save the sight of some patients, but many will never see again.
“There is no doubt that what happened was extremely tragic when you see this overwhelming number of people with eye injuries arriving at the hospital at the same time, most of them young men, but also children and young women,” he told The Associated Press last week at a Beirut hospital, fighting back tears.
Lebanese hospitals and medical centers were overwhelmed after thousands of hand-held bombs detonated simultaneously by the militant group Hezbollah on Tuesday and Wednesday last week, killing at least 39 people. Around 3,000 others were injured, some with life-threatening disabilities. Israel is widely seen as the perpetrator of the attack, although it has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.
Although the explosions appeared to have targeted Hezbollah fighters, many of the victims were civilians. And many of the injured suffered injuries to their hands, faces and eyes because the bombs received messages shortly before detonation and so they looked at the bombs during the explosion.
Authorities have not released any information on how many people have lost their sight.
Experienced and hardened Lebanese ophthalmologists who have dealt with the aftermath of numerous wars, civil unrest and explosions said they had never seen anything like this before.
Jaradeh, a reformist who also serves as a member of parliament representing southern Lebanon, said most of the patients admitted to his hospital, which specializes in ophthalmology, are young people who have suffered significant damage to one or both eyes. He said he has found plastic and metal fragments in some of their eyes.
Four years ago A massive explosion shook the port of Beirut. More than 200 people were killed and over 6,000 injured. The explosion, caused by the detonation of hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate that had been stored unsafely in a port warehouse, blew out windows and doors for miles and sent a shower of broken glass raining down on the streets, causing terrible injuries.
Jaradeh also treated people injured in the port explosion, but his experience with those injured by the exploding pagers and walkie-talkies was even more intense due to the sheer number of people with eye injuries.
“I think it took 48 hours to contain the shock after the explosion at the port of Beirut, but now we have not reached that phase of shock containment,” Jaradeh said.
Jaradeh said he found it difficult to separate his work as a doctor from his emotions in the operating room.
“No matter what you were taught (in medical school) about distance, I think in a situation like this it is very difficult to see the sheer number of injured. This is linked to a war against Lebanon and a war against humanity,” Jaradeh said.
