On Saturday, nine paramedics were killed and seven wounded in five distinct Israeli attacks across southern Lebanon. The deaths came during a day that saw not only medical personnel targeted but also three journalists killed while covering the conflict. For Lebanon's healthcare system, already under severe strain from months of escalating warfare, these incidents represent a turning point: the deliberate dismantling of the infrastructure that keeps the wounded alive.
March has become the second deadliest month for health workers in Lebanon since the WHO began tracking such attacks in October 2023. The toll has become staggering. The World Health Organization reports 64 attacks on healthcare facilities across Lebanon since March 2 and that five hospitals are out of service. More recent figures indicate four hospitals and 51 primary health care centres are now closed, significantly limiting access to essential care.
Consider the impossible position paramedics now occupy. In the southern Lebanese town of Nabatieh, paramedics buried two of their own killed in an Israeli strike: Ali Jaber and Joud Sleiman, who were hit on Tuesday while headed out on a motorcycle in southern Lebanon on a rescue mission, both wearing paramedic uniforms and their motorcycle clearly marked as an ambulance complete with flashing lights. The markings that should protect them have become targeting indicators.
Strip away the technical language around international law and what remains is a fundamental question: what obligation do rescue workers have when answering the call might mean dying? Mehdi Sadeq, a founding member of Nabatieh's paramedic unit, said the risk of being caught up in a double-tap strike meant rescuers were being forced to delay rescue operations. Every delayed response is a life not saved, a wound that becomes infected in the waiting.
Israel's military has justified its operations by alleging that ambulances and medical facilities are being used for military purposes. Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee alleged that ambulances and medical facilities in Lebanon are being used for military purposes; the Lebanese ministry of health denied the claim. History offers a cautionary note. Amnesty International investigated four Israeli attacks on healthcare facilities and medical vehicles that killed 19 healthcare workers and wounded 11 more in a one-week period between 3 and 9 October 2024 and did not find indications that the medical facilities or personnel targeted had been used for military purposes or for acts harmful to the enemy.
The counter-argument deserves serious consideration: armed groups operating in civilian spaces present genuine targeting challenges. But international humanitarian law does not permit making those decisions on the basis of allegations. Hospitals and medical transports only lose their protection if they are used for acts considered harmful to the enemy and can only be targeted after a warning that gives sufficient time for evacuation; in cases of doubt as to whether medical facilities are being used to contribute to military activity, they should be presumed not to be so used.
Voters and citizens across the region deserve clarity on a basic principle: accountability. Prior investigations found no evidence of military use in the 2024 attacks, and Amnesty called for investigation of those attacks as war crimes. What resulted from those calls? The pattern simply repeated at higher tempo.
The immediate consequence is measured in medical capacity. Repeated attacks are severely disrupting healthcare delivery, with four hospitals and 51 primary healthcare centres now shut down, while several others are operating at reduced capacity due to damage. Israel's strikes in Lebanon have wounded more than 3,000 people and killed nearly 1,100, including more than 120 children and 80 women. When those casualty numbers exceed medical capacity, the system collapses not in one catastrophic moment but through incremental failure.
For the paramedics themselves, the moral injury compounds the physical one. One 16-year-old volunteer paramedic's father, the lead paramedic in Nabatieh, announced he would begin work again directly after his son's funeral. This is not stoicism; this is systemic coercion. A medical system can absorb the loss of facilities. It cannot absorb the loss of will.
The fundamental question is not whether one side or the other bears responsibility for the broader conflict. It is whether the targeting of clearly identified rescue workers can be justified, or whether international law means anything at all when accountability is absent. On the evidence, Lebanon's healthcare system has become not a refuge but a battlefield. And the workers who staff it have become, deliberately or not, targets.