'Shock and indignation' in Lebanon after pager explosions, health minister says

ITV News' International Editor Emma Murphy reports from outside a hospital in Beirut where hundreds of those injured are being treated.

Lebanon is in a state of “shock and indignation” according to the country’s Health Minister, Dr Firass Abiad.

Dr Abiad spoke to me at the Mount Lebanon Hospital University Medical Centre in Beirut where hundreds of those injured in Tuesday’s blasts are being treated.

He said he was concerned what the simultaneous attacks, when explosives hidden in Hezbollah pagers exploded, would mean for the country and the region.

The unprecedented breach of the militant group’s security killed nine people including at least one child and left around 3,000 injured. Though Israel has not, and will not, claim responsibility Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate.

Outside each of Beirut’s hospitals there is the same scene. Dozens and dozens of shocked relatives waiting for news on those being treated inside.

Thousands have required medical treatment, stretching the healthcare system which was already at expanded capacity incase of a regional war.

I saw a number of patients inside the hospital. They appeared to have burns to the faces and heavily bandaged eyes. Some had hand, arm and leg injuries.

Overnight, as we travelled to Beirut, I spoke to Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, the prominent British-Palestinian plastic surgeon.

He was en-route to Lebanon to help medical teams treating the injured. He told me those who were looking at their pagers after they beeped, had suffered often life changing eye, facial and hand injuries which would require extensive reconstructive surgery.

Others who had the pager on their belts or in pockets had flank and lower limb injures while those who had them in top pockets were dead.

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Given so many of the explosions happened in public places there is a real sense of vulnerability among the wider Lebanese population.

Many stay well away from known Hezbollah locations. Yesterday’s attacks highlighted just how present the groups members are in all parts of this society.

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