In a hospital in the southern suburbs of Beirut, an AFP correspondent saw wounded people being treated in a parking lot, on mattresses laid on the floor and stretchers covered in blood.
Outside another hospital, a wounded man is treated in a car. Inside, an AFP correspondent saw a man with injuries to his face, eye and hand, and another with injuries to his hip. Images of bloodied people, some with fingers missing, circulated on social media. In tents hastily set up under a bridge in Beirut’s southern suburbs, hundreds of people gathered to donate blood, amid the sirens of ambulances.
A witness told AFP he saw a Hezbollah member he knew receiving messages on his pager before the device exploded. Elsewhere in the commercial district of Hamra, dozens of people gathered outside the entrance to one of the capital’s main hospitals, as ambulances came and went.
Outside the emergency department of the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC), men and women, some in black chadors, try to get news of the injured in an atmosphere of chaos.
