These plans were designed to prepare hospitals and government services for the possibility of a major confrontation with Israel. However, after months of sustained fighting, Beirut is struggling to provide basic services to its citizens.
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Hospital staff in Beirut
(Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir)
Last week, Lebanon’s state-run electricity company announced that it would have to completely shut off electricity supplies across the country due to a fuel shortage. Key facilities such as airports, ports and prisons now rely on backup power. At the same time, most households in the country receive electricity for only a few hours a day and must fill the gap with expensive private generators.
Lebanon’s Health Minister Firas Abiad acknowledged that the nationwide power outage was making it difficult for hospitals to prepare for the worst-case scenario. “When you don’t have additional capacity, every resource has to be used wisely,” he said. “That is the biggest challenge for us now.”
The two were put into an artificial coma at the facility, where doctors wear Hezbollah badges and a colorful mosaic of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei hangs on the walls. A relative of the injured woman said that after the incident, Hezbollah sent a vehicle to Beirut to transport him south and provided him with a place to sleep in the hospital.
“There is mutual respect between us,” Hassan Ahmed Mousa, a relative of the two, said of Hezbollah’s treatment of his family members. Standing next to a yellow Hezbollah flag, he repeatedly expressed his gratitude to the terrorist organization and looked at two Hezbollah officials sitting next to him as he answered the reporter’s questions.
The Lebanese electricity company announced the suspension of electricity supplies and stated that “all options have been exhausted.” It also noted that it is currently unclear how long the crisis will last. The blackout in Lebanon shows that a long-standing problem has not been resolved and that the situation has significantly worsened.
However, this incident came as no surprise to the country’s population, as Lebanon has been suffering from an electricity crisis for some time. In the weeks before the shutdown, several politicians had warned that the situation was on the verge of collapse.
