Lebanese doctor races to save eyes of those hurt by tech explosions

A Lebanese doctor has said there have been an “overwhelming number of people with eye injuries” after pagers and walkie-talkies exploded across Lebanon.

Elias Jaradeh, an ophthalmologist, said he lost track of how many eye operations he has performed in multiple hospitals, surviving on two hours of sleep before starting on the next operation.

While he has managed to save some patients’ sight, 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 same time to the hospital, most of them young men, but also children and young women,” he told The Associated Press at a Beirut hospital this past week, struggling to hold back tears.

Lebanese hospitals and medics were inundated after thousands of hand-held devices belonging to the Hezbollah militant group detonated simultaneously on Tuesday and Wednesday last week, killing at least 39 people.

Around 3,000 more were wounded, some with life-altering disabilities. Israel is widely believed to have been behind the attack, although it has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.

Although the explosions appear to have targeted Hezbollah fighters, many of the victims were civilians.

Devices received messages before explosions

Many of those hurt in the attack suffered injuries to their hands, face and eyes because the devices received messages just before they detonated, so they were looking at the devices as they exploded.

Authorities have not said how many people lost their eyes.

Veteran and hardened Lebanese eye doctors who have dealt with the aftermath of multiple wars, civil unrest and explosions, said they have never seen anything like it.

Jaradeh, who is also a lawmaker representing south Lebanon as a reformist, said most of the patients sent to his hospital, which specialises in ophthalmology, were young people who had significant damage to one or both eyes.

He said he found plastic and metal shrapnel inside some of their eyes.

Jaradeh also treated people hurt in the port explosion that killed more than 200 people four years ago, but his experience with those wounded by the exploding pagers and walkie-talkies has been so much more intense because of the sheer volume of people with eye injuries.

“No matter what they taught you (in medical school) about distancing yourself, I think in a situation like this, it is very hard when you see the sheer numbers of wounded. This is linked to a war on Lebanon and war on humanity,” Jaradeh said.