'I Can’t Forget the Smell': Lebanese Reel After Israel Kills Over 300 in Single Day
Zeteo speaks to survivors of the deadliest day in the resumed war, after Lebanon saw more than 100 Israeli strikes in 10 minutes.
This article was published in collaboration with Egab.
BEIRUT, Lebanon – The smell was the first thing Louna couldn’t explain. Charred flesh, gunpowder, burnt fabric, and the rubber of ambulance tires screaming down the steep entrance ramp to the hospital. She had worked through the Beirut port explosion. She had worked through the pager attacks. Nothing had smelled like this.
“I don’t know what kind of rockets they used,” said Louna, 30, an emergency room nurse at a hospital in Beirut’s suburbs. “I can’t forget the smell, it was so strong.”
At around 2:20 in the afternoon, the hospital heard the strikes and rang the Code Orange alert. Louna called her father first – she knew he was out on the streets – then her mother, her sister, the rest of her family. They were all crying. She prayed, walking toward the ER, that it wasn’t as bad as it sounded.