Traces of 'white phosphorus' found in 7 people: Lebanese doctor

TYRE, Lebanon

Traces of “white phosphorus” have been found in seven people hospitalized after Israeli attacks on the border areas in southern Lebanon, a Lebanese doctor said on Tuesday.

"Very high levels of sweating and vomiting were seen in the patients who came to our emergency department,” Muhammed Mustafa, a doctor at the Emergency Department of the Italian Hospital in the city of Tyre, told Anadolu. "We could smell the phosphorus".

Noting that they put on gloves and masks before examining the patients, Mustafa said: "We took off the patients' clothes and washed them from head to toe with plenty of water.”

“Then oxygen therapy was performed,” he said, adding the patients included five members of civil defense and two were civilians.

Ali Safiyeddin, the director of the Civil Defense Department in Tyre, told Anadolu that they have been working to evacuate the villagers stranded in the area since the day Israel launched the attack.

He said that the clashes became “very violent” in the Ed-Duhaira village on Monday.

"There were bombings before, but yesterday they were very violent,” Safiyeddin said.

“It was stated that the bombs were made with white phosphorus,” he said, adding: “We were in danger of suffocation due to the smoke of the bomb.”

He said that they evacuated a total of 60 villagers who were in danger of suffocation due to the fumes in Duhaira. "Four people from our team were affected by the smoke and taken to the hospital."

Safiyeddin recalled that they also evacuated villagers from the area during the war that broke out between Israel and Hezbollah on July 16, 2006, saying: “We did not see such bombs at that time.”

“This is the first time we have seen such missiles. There was a lot of smell from the smoke in Ed-Duhaira," he added.

Eleven days into the conflict with Palestinian group Hamas, Israel's bombardment and blockade of the Gaza Strip has continued, with over one million people displaced – almost half of Gaza's total population, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

The fighting began when Hamas on Oct. 7 initiated Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, a multi-pronged surprise attack that included a barrage of rocket launches and infiltrations into Israel by land, sea, and air. It said the incursion was in retaliation for the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and increased violence by Israeli settlers.

The Israeli military then launched Operation Swords of Iron against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip.

Israel's response has extended into cutting water and electricity supplies to Gaza, further worsening the living conditions in an area that has reeled under a crippling siege since 2007.

At least 3,061 Palestinians have been killed and 13,750 others have been injured in the ongoing Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, the Health Ministry in Gaza said.

More than 1,400 Israelis have been killed in the armed conflict.

*Writing by Merve Berker in Ankara