Surgeon ‘became robotic’ to treat sheer volume of wounded Lebanese

The bomb attacks – which killed 37 people including two children – have been widely blamed on Israel, which has not claimed responsibility.

Warning: This report contains graphic details

Dr Jaradeh, who is also an MP for the Change parliamentary bloc, was working at a specialist eye and ear hospital where some of the most severely wounded people were sent. He said it had taken a toll on the medical teams, himself included.

“And, yes, it’s very hard,” the surgeon said. “You have to dissociate yourself. More or less, you are robotic. This is the way you have to behave, but inside, you are deeply injured. You are seeing the nation injured.”

Surgeons like Dr Jaradeh worked for almost 24 hours continuously on the wounded, many of whom have lost their eyesight or the use of their hands, the country’s health minister told the BBC.

Eye specialist Prof Elias Warrak told BBC Arabic that in one night he extracted more damaged eyes than he had previously in his entire career.

“It was very hard,” he said. “Most of the patients were young men in their twenties and in some cases I had to remove both eyes. In my whole life I had not seen scenes similar to what I saw yesterday.”

Health Minister Firass Abiad told the BBC the victims’ injuries would prove life-changing.

“This is something that unfortunately will require a lot of rehabilitation,” he said.

About 3,200 people were injured, most of them in Tuesday’s attack which saw thousands of pagers detonated.

Wednesday’s attack, which detonated two-way radio devices, wounded about 450 people but was responsible for 25 deaths, twice as many as in Tuesday’s blasts.