The BBC’s Orla Guerin has been taken on a tour of Al Sahel Hospital in Beirut where Israel claims millions of dollars in cash and gold are kept in a hidden Hezbollah bunker underneath.
Doctors denied the allegation and took the BBC through the building, including to the first and second level below ground. They insisted there is nothing underneath.
On Monday night the hospital had to evacuate around 50 staff and 15 patients - none of them critical - when Israel made its claim.
Hospital officials have insisted that Al Sahel has no connection with any organisation, or group, or faction.
I’m not sure what the point of all this is? As if gold was going to be stacked in a broom cupboard or something.
If the bunker is real the entrance is going to be under a dusty mat at the back of an office under a pile of chairs. Not a door off corridor B.
If it’s made up, not sure what Israel gains from that particular lie since it’s so easy for the likes of BBC to put out a video like the above.
The BBC had full access to the hospital. They were able to go wherever they wanted.
Israel gains the ability to terroize people in hospitals under the guise of a military target by lying.
It just seems like an odd thing to claim. If it were true it gives Hezbollah notice to move it all somewhere else (which, let’s be neutral, may have happened). If it’s a complete lie, it doesn’t justify bombing a hospital and you just end with journalists like the BBC walking around saying “no there isn’t”.
So either way it just seems like an odd announcement to make.
Destroying the hospital destroys vital services in Lebanon’s capitol city. A nation - especially one that is already struggling after years of economic crisis and national disasters - that has its healthcare system under attack is a destabilized nation.
If people are fleeing and not united, they cannot support a government, and the government cannot fight against an unlawful invasion.
They haven’t destroyed the hospital though?
Not yet. But their intentions are clear.
Not this one, but they’ve destroyed others under the same “suspicions”