Beqaa Valley, Lebanon – The carnage of Israel’s war with Hezbollah – a conflict that takes place in parallel and has direct ties to the devastating war in the Gaza Strip – continued throughout the weekend, with lives lost on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border. In Gaza, health officials said Monday that the toll from the war, sparked by the Palestinian enclave’s Hamas rulers with their brutal Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, had reached nearly 42,300, while nearly 99,000 others were injured.
But as fighting continues in the decimated Gaza Strip, the Israeli army made a determined shift to what it calls the northern front. broader war with Iranian-backed groups in the region about a month ago. Since then, Lebanese officials say more than 2,300 people have been killed and nearly 10,700 others injured in the country. The country’s health ministry says 51 people died on Sunday alone.
Much of Israel’s firepower is focused on Hezbollah’s old strongholds in the southern outskirts of Beirut and southern Lebanon. Major Israeli ground operations in the south have done the same place United Nations peacekeepers in the line of fire. But airstrikes have also frequently hit Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley without warning.
Last week, CBS News visited the region’s Rayak Hospital, where some of the youngest victims of the spreading war are being treated, including 16-year-old Ali Jaddouh.
CBS News/Agnes Reau
He recently had at least one severely damaged kidney and had his colon at least partially removed, as well as his right leg above the knee. He was in critical condition as a dialysis machine did the work on his shattered organs. He told us he was in pain, and his haunted eyes suggested it was more than just physical.
The teenager said he was home with his family late in the morning when an Israeli airstrike hit their town of Shmustar. He said the rocket could have hit only about 30 feet from where they were sitting.
“I wanted to run to help my mother, but I saw my leg being cut. I lost consciousness and I can’t remember what happened next,” he said.
He woke up in the hospital to find he had lost most of his leg.
“I was told my father might be dead. My mother can’t walk anymore. She lost her leg and had some damage to her back, and my eldest brother’s face was burned.”
Israel says it is targeting Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the Iran-backed, US-Israeli-designated terrorist group that has fired thousands of missiles and drones into Israel since October 8, 2023. The Palestinian people and Iran’s other allies, Hamas, also include the deadly drone attack last weekend killing four Israeli troops at a base in central Israel and wounding dozens of other people.
The director of Rayak Hospital told CBS News that the facility had only treated civilians for the past two weeks. While our team was there this weekend, there was another Israeli attack nearby. The agonized screams of two injured girls rushed to the emergency room echoed through the hallways.
CBS News/Agnes Reau
Nurse Mountaha Mkahal has been so busy caring for patients that, like many of Rayak’s staff, she has been sleeping in the hospital.
“It’s very difficult and upsetting,” she told CBS News. “I am morally obliged to be here in time of war – not just to do my job when there is security and peace. This is the crucial time.”
She knows that because air raids happen often and without warning, members of her own young family could come through the emergency room doors at any time.
Mkahal said seeing children suffer was the hardest part of her job. Children like six-year-old Sawsan, who was brought in with six skull fractures. Doctors had to remove shrapnel from her brain. The little girl was in so much pain that not even her mother’s loving touch could ease the pain or erase the horror.
CBS News/Agnes Reau
“It is very difficult to see a child suffer, and it reminds me of my own children, but I am hopeful that those children and people will recover and return to normal. We must do our best to help them recover, regardless of whether she can make a full recovery or not,” the nurse said.
Recovery will still seem far away for many of the young patients in Rayak, and for some, fear and pain are already being displaced by other emotions brought on by a war they did not help create and cannot help stop.
When asked what he would say about the people who tore his village and his family apart, Ali Jaddouh told CBS News: “May God take revenge.”
Tucker Reals contributed to this report.
