Two men on mopeds pass buildings destroyed by an Israeli strike in Mais al-Jabal, southern Lebanon, May 5, 2024. (Credit: AFP)
BEIRUT — The municipality of Mais al-Jabal called on Lebanese authorities and international organizations to help preserve its government hospital in the face of Israeli threats against the facility on Wednesday evening. The Marjayoun district village, located along the southern border with Israel, has suffered widespread destruction from Israeli bombings and shellings in the last month of intensified fighting.
According to a statement from the municipality, reports were circulating late Wednesday afternoon that the Israeli army had rigged the Mais al-Jabal Government Hospital with explosives, with the intention of completely destroying the facility.
Satellite imagery of Mais al-Jabal shows several neighborhoods razed to the ground. Among the infrastructure that has been destroyed in the village, the municipality's statement lists all of its schools and educational institutions, hundreds of homes, retail stores, water tanks, communications and radio stations, the city call, and places of worship. The statement says some of the village's cemeteries were bulldozed.
Since starting its ground incursions into southern Lebanon, the Israeli army has rigged neighborhoods and small villages with explosives, leveling entire areas and posting video footage of themselves celebrating the destruction. The army has carried out these same acts in Gaza over the last year of war there.
Appealing to authorities nationally and internationally, including the World Health Organization, Mais al-Jabal has asked for actors to "intervene quickly" and "make the necessary contacts to protect the hospital in this locality from the brutal aggression of the Israeli army." The situation is unfolding against a backdrop of violent clashes with Israeli ground troops and Hezbollah.
"The village has suffered more than 500 air strikes since the start of the war," Mayor of Mais al-Jabal Abdelmenhem Choucair told L'Orient Today on Nov. 4. "More than 5,000 shells of various calibers were fired into the area, including phosphorus shells, which have devastated our farmland and homes." In the same report, Choucair said 73 people had been killed in Mais al-Jabal and hundreds injured.
