Surviving and Treating

Israel’s war on Lebanon has killed more than 130 health workers since the start of the second escalation in March 2026, in addition to more than 241 killed since the start of the war in October 2023. These attacks have been deemed as war crimes by human rights groups, and fall under the scorched earth principle that Israel adopts in Lebanon: emptying the land of its people and destroying life-sustaining infrastructure.

In hospitals in southern Lebanon, and Beirut’s Southern Suburbs, “Dahieh”, doctors and nurses continue to witness Israel’s violent attacks on Lebanon, enduring the continuous threat of attacks, and the psychological trauma of working under fire. Ibrahim Faraj is the head of the emergency surgery department in the Lebanese Italian Hospital in the Tyre district in southern Lebanon for fourteen years now. He studied emergency surgery in Italy and graduated in 1993.

Ibrahim spent more than 100 days in the hospital’s emergency department treating the war’s injured, since the reignition of the war between Lebanon and Israel on 2 March 2026. He is one of thousands of healthcare personnel who work in areas under the threat of Israeli strikes and large-scale evacuation warnings. Israel has issued evacuation warnings in many regions in southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs where many hospitals are located. On 9 June, Israel ordered the evacuation of the entire city of Tyre. Ibrahim says that the hospital cannot be evacuated even if strikes are close or imminent, iterating that “If we leave, our presence would have no meaning to begin with”. As of 6 July, 3 hospitals and 35 primary healthcare centers are non-operational in southern Lebanon, and during the first escalation in September 2024, 15 out of 153 hospitals stopped operating fully or were partially functioning due to Israeli attacks, largely reducing access to healthcare.

On 17 June, two days before the announcement of the 19 June agreement, Ibrahim posted two selfies, one before the war, and one 105 days later. He uses his Facebook account as a diary. During his short breaks in the hospital’s parking lot, he documents his days working in the emergency floor, logging his reflections, thoughts and feelings. His words describe what it is like to work as an emergency surgeon in a hospital in southern Lebanon during the war. On 13 May 2026, he started an entry with “nearby heavy bombardment for the past two hours”, where he reflected on the seven wars he survived as an emergency surgeon, recalling events from the Lebanese civil war, and many of his memories from Lebanon’s violent and tumultuous history. “When I chose this specialty, I thought it could be useful in an unstable country like Lebanon. It turns out I was right”.

The historic city of Tyre in southern Lebanon was left in ruins due to heavy Israeli bombardment during the second escalation, and several of its hospitals were impacted. Dr. Ibrahim recounts two strikes that fell a street away from the Lebanese Italian Hospital. One of them damaged the dialysis floor while patients were receiving their treatment procedures.

One case stayed with him. A young boy was brought in after an airstrike with damaged eyes and a minimal chance of survival. Ibrahim operated on him. When the boy regained consciousness after the operation, he woke up and asked Doctor Ibrahim “Why did you turn off the lights?”, to which Ibrahim responded that the hospital is trying to save electricity. The boy was transferred to another facility for specialized treatment. He died when he arrived.

“As surgeons, we witness people's death repeatedly because we see reality at its barest,” Ibrahim says. "Our brain is an archive of photos of the dead and injured, and these images keep coming back."

Over at Jabal Amel Hospital a few neighbourhoods away, Abbas Attieh heads the emergency department. On 1 June 2026, he was lying on the couch across from his office desk when an Israeli strike targeted the hospital's parking lot, killing four people and injuring more than a hundred. “The first 40 to 50 people who arrived were people we knew. They are friends and acquaintances from the area”.

Abbas says he expected a strike, “At the end of the day, we know that Israel is targeting healthcare infrastructure and healthcare facilities to empty out the south as much as possible”. He recounts a case of a young man he received with a severed leg and very low blood pressure. As he was assessing him, he realised the face was familiar. “I tried to find his ID to see who he is, then I remembered that I’ve seen him in my village, I knew his father, a very nice man”. Abbas managed to save the man’s life, and the two of them became friends.

“There is no textbook that teaches you how to work in conditions of war,” Abbas says. "What we study doesn't look like anything that we encounter in the reality of working as the bombs are falling." On a single shift, he might receive a newborn, an elderly man, and a pregnant woman, all from the same house that was struck, each requiring entirely different treatment.

Abbas got married in 2019 and has two children. “Our home in Kafra in the south was destroyed, and we were displaced and stayed in Beirut”. Following the June de-escalation, his family returned to the south and are staying  with his in-laws in a near-by village. Abbas copes by thinking of the future. His retirement project is to establish a farm in his village, “the land is my anti-depressant”. His children are used to rural areas with a lot of greenery. “This is what I taught them”.

Abbas reflects on the violence and losses of war, “I cannot reconcile with all of this violence. It’s a deep wound and nothing will make me forget seeing people in pain, injured or killed. Doctors don’t become apathetic. Nothing can make us lose our humanity. We treat people we know, and we think about them all the time.”

In Beirut, Lamis el-Dayekh has led the nursing team in the Emergency Department at the Rafik Hariri University Hospital (RHUH) adjacent to Beirut’s Dahieh since 2008. During the 2024 escalation, Israel struck the hospital’s vicinity, killing 13 people, including one child, and injuring 57 others. Lamis feared that Lebanon’s hospitals would face the same fate as Gaza's. She thought to herself, “Are they going to start bombing hospitals like they did in Gaza? What will I do?”.

On 9 April, a large-scale evacuation warning was issued by Israel covering the outskirts of Dahieh, including RHUH and more than 5 other hospitals in the outskirts of Dahieh. On that day, the World Health Organization conducted urgent diplomatic efforts with various entities to ensure that medical facilities within the marked area remained protected under international humanitarian law. Based on these guarantees, the hospitals were not evacuated, but thousands fled and were stranded on the streets. This happened the day after Black Wednesday on 8 April, when Israel launched more than 100 strikes at the same time across Lebanon, killing more than 357 people.

Lamis was present at the hospital throughout many of the war’s most violent days. The pagers attack in September 2024 is one of the events that marked her. “I fainted at the sight of blood when treating the first injured patient I received. Their eyes were gone, their face was deformed and they had no fingers”. At 3:30 PM, on the afternoon of September 17, the hospital was notified of the attack. “We received a call about pagers exploding, and we were told to get ready”. Lamis had been working since 7 AM that day, and finished at 8:30 PM, after more than 12 hours of work.

Lamis gets her strength from her two children. She has a 10-year-old son and a 12-year old daughter. “My son told everyone at school that I treat all the injured of the war”. Her daughter follows the news and says that she doesn’t trust that Israel will abide by any ceasefire. “I don’t trust Israel. Every time a ceasefire is announced, they commit massacres”. Lamis drives to the hospital along a road that connects Beirut to cities in the south, a route that has been struck many times. "I leave for work every day risking not seeing them again", she says of her two children.

Many of the patients she receives now are displaced. They come in with chest pains, panic attacks and cardiac arrests. "They tell us that they had just found out that their homes were destroyed," she says. "Where will all of this pain go? These people had entire lives and suddenly found themselves displaced in a school shelter or a tent." She and her colleagues try to absorb it. "We try to show them that we are all suffering, and we are going through all of this together."

Healthcare workers in Lebanon have been navigating the war on several fronts, and their mental health has been severely impacted. A study conducted by public health researchers at a major tertiary hospital in Beirut showed high risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among healthcare professionals in Lebanon following the 2023-2024 hostilities. PTSD is a psychological reaction to traumatic events such as war and disasters, and symptoms range from flashbacks, recurrent and intrusive thoughts, avoidance, anxiety and depression. Healthcare workers and staff who were displaced, injured by the war, lost their homes or lost relatives were among the ones at higher risk of PTSD. Notably, ophthalmologists showed higher scores of trauma, which can be explained by their direct exposure to the pagers attack while treating victims.

According to clinical psychologist Maya Dbouk, PTSD symptoms typically manifest after the fact. However, in Lebanon, violent events are repetitive and unexpected, causing a general sense of hypervigilance for everyone. “I see that many people, including healthcare providers, are increasingly seeking mental health support”, Dbouk says. She explains that mental health systems and services are available and accessible. The Ministry of Public Health launched the National Mental Health Programme (NMHP) in 2014 with the support of international medical organizations with the vision of ensuring the well-being and mental health for everyone living in Lebanon. The 2024-2030 strategy responds to the context of war and crisis by dedicating resources to support healthcare providers and all professionals in the medical field by building capacity and helping them safeguard their own mental health.

Ibrahim’s archive of images, Abbas’ patient who was an acquaintance and became a friend, and Lamis’s fear for her children are examples of what thousands of healthcare workers experience on a daily basis. While they’ve developed mechanisms to cope and go on, the support they need is as essential as the support they provide.

Reporting Lebanon is a collaborative storytelling project that brings together independent Lebanese journalists to document everyday life in a country shaped by war, displacement, and prolonged instability. Through in-depth reportages and narrative-driven features, the project focuses on the human, social, and psychological realities that have unfolded in the aftermath of the 2023–2024 and 2026 escalation – at a time when violence has formally subsided in parts of the country, yet insecurity and uncertainty persist. Rather than offering situational reports, Reporting Lebanon prioritizes long-form journalism that stays close to its protagonists. The project seeks to capture how people experience, remember, and endure war – and how its consequences continue to shape daily life long after the headlines fade. Reporting Lebanon is a cooperation between the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) and zenith.