Israel deliberately attacking healthcare workers has been a recurring theme throughout their ongoing invasion of Lebanon, and this weekend was no different, with multiple incidents of Israeli attacks on ambulances being reported.
The fatal incident was in Kfar Roumine, where an airstrike targeted a moving ambulance, killing a paramedic aboard and wounding two others, who were later taken to a hospital. The paramedic was identified as Ali Shahrour.
The previous day, an ambulance crew survived an attack in Nabatieh al-Fawqa which the IDF described as an attack on “infrastructure.” The attack was noteworthy both because of the ambulance being hit, but also because it was a rare example of a “triple tap” strike.
Ambulance destroyed in Israeli airstrike in Bint Jbeil | image from X
Israel routinely uses double tap attacks in southern Lebanon and elsewhere, hitting a target, then following up with a second attack to harm anyone trying to rescue the victims of the first target. The Old Square in Nabatieh al-Fawqa saw what was perceived as a typical double tap strike, only for IDF forces to attack for a third time when the ambulance arrived. The IDF did not mention hitting the ambulance in discussion of their attack.
That’s increasingly common. Early in the war, IDF narratives attempted to portray paramedics as in league with terrorists in some vague way to try to spin those attacks as somehow legally permissible. Increasingly, they’re just not acknowledging that the incidents happened at all.
IDF strikes were also reported on the outskirts of Sarbin, in the far south of Lebanon, though no casualties were reported in those incidents. The IDF claimed an explosive device injured two of their soldiers and blamed Hezbollah for that. Subsequent IDF comments on strikes presented them as retaliation for the incident, though there appears to have been no direct connection between that incident and the ambulances.
