MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Let's go overseas now. More than 12,000 people in Lebanon have been injured by Israeli airstrikes. Now, those injuries commonly include burns, and the most severe cases end up in one particular hospital in Beirut. NPR's Arezou Rezvani takes us there. And a warning - this piece describes the toll Israel's war in Lebanon is taking on civilians, especially children.
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AREZOU REZVANI, BYLINE: There are no more beds available at the Geitaoui Hospital's burn center.
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ZIAD SLEIMAN: Every day, we have several calls from the hospitals to transfer patients, but we cannot - of course, we cannot accept everybody because of the big flow of patients.
REZVANI: That's Dr. Ziad Sleiman. He's been a plastic and reconstructive surgeon here for the last 20 years, and he's never seen this wing of the hospital under so much strain.
SLEIMAN: What we have done - we have transferred staff from other wards to the burn units, and we are training staff about the burn and the trauma and complicated wounds, fractures. So it's complicated.
REZVANI: These severe burn cases Dr. Sleiman and his team are treating are from Israeli airstrikes. They started last year. After Hamas carried out its October 7 attack on Israel, Hezbollah started firing rockets from Lebanon in a show of solidarity. A low-grade conflict ensued, and then, last month, it turned into a full-fledged war. Israel killed Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah, sent ground troops into Lebanon and expanded its airstrikes. Several high-ranking Hezbollah officials have been killed, but it's come at a huge cost.
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SLEIMAN: This is Ivana.
REZVANI: Ivana Liqbiri (ph) is the youngest patient in this burn unit. She's 18 months old and wrapped in bandages from head to toe. There's only enough room for a pink, little pacifier. Her mother, Fatima, is at her bedside. She recounts the day her village, Deir Qanoun al-Nahr (ph), was attacked.
FATIMA: (Through interpreter) We were packing our bags and getting ready to evacuate our home. And we thought we'd have time for a quick breakfast first. My daughters were playing outside on the balcony, and then it happened.
REZVANI: In a flash, the wood terrace the two little girls were playing on went up in flames.
FATIMA: (Through interpreter) I don't know what divine strength filled me, but I grabbed my girls from the fire and threw them over the balcony to save them.
REZVANI: Fatima now splits her time between two different hospitals, where her daughters are getting treated for severe burns. There weren't enough beds for both girls to stay together. On this day, Fatima is at the bedside of little Ivana. Tomorrow, she'll swap places with her husband and visit 7-year-old Raha, who often asks if they'll ever return home and worries they'll end up on the streets.
FATIMA: (Through interpreter) This generation now knows war. My 7-year-old sees Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on the television and says, mom, is this the man that is killing us? Will the Israelis come and kill us?
REZVANI: Fatima says she doesn't know why her village was attacked. Israel claims it struck 1,600 Hezbollah targets across southern Lebanon in airstrikes that killed more than 500 people that day. How many were Hezbollah fighters is not clear. NPR asked the Israeli military why Fatima's village was hit. It said airstrikes can bring on, quote, "secondary explosions indicating the presence of munitions, rockets, and lethal missiles." This is what makes this war so cruel, so painful. Fighters and civilians, young and old - their fate is often intertwined. It's one that little Ivana narrowly escaped, badly wounded.
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REZVANI: Many of her first words are now just whimpers. Her mother tries to cheer her up, waving a doll the hospital got her...
FATIMA: (Non-English language spoken).
REZVANI: ...But the pain medication is starting to wear off. The road ahead for the Liqbiri family is uncertain, but one thing is for sure, says Fatima. They will never return to the village they fled from - not even after the war ends.
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REZVANI: All the good memories of their life there - they're all gone.
Arezou Rezvani, NPR News, Beirut.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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