The Observer reports:

In hospitals around Lebanon, ­hundreds of patients were adjusting to a new life, many of them now with permanent disabilities. The pager explosions resulted in many being blinded and losing a hand. The pagers had beeped twice, and then there was a pause, giving people enough time to bring them to their face before they exploded.

“Enucleation [removal of the eye] is a procedure that is rarely ­performed these days. One of our senior ­ophthalmologists was saying that he has done more enucleations in one day than he has done in his entire career,” Lebanon’s health minister, Firas Abiad, told the Observer. The CEO of LAU Medical Center-Rizk Hospital in Beirut, Sami Rizk, said that they would ask other countries to donate eye prostheses.

The series of attacks has prompted unity across Lebanon. Over the past year, the country has been divided over Hezbollah’s war with Israel, with some saying it was necessary to force a ceasefire in Gaza and others ­resenting Lebanon being dragged into the conflict.

It was Hezbollah that fired at Israel first on 8 October, in what it said was an act of “solidarity” with Hamas’s attack the day before.

Since then, the Lebanese group has maintained that it would not stop its attacks against north Israel until a ceasefire is achieved in Gaza. The fighting has killed more than 500 in Lebanon, more than 200 of whom are civilians, and destroyed entire villages along the Lebanon-Israel border.

After the pager explosions, criticisms of Hezbollah’s war against Israel stopped. Lines have formed outside hospitals as people come to donate blood. Officials put out a statement saying that kidney donations were not needed and that eye transplants were impossible, after a number of citizens offered their own.

“Israel is attacking us, it’s not any more against Hezbollah, it’s against civilians. Even if we are against Hezbollah, when Israel attacks Lebanon, people stand next to each other,” Cherif said. [Continue reading…]