Northern Israel Hospitals Forced Underground
Ryan R. Jones - All Headline News Correspondent Jerusalem, Israel (AHN) - Rambam Hospital in the northern Israel port city of Haifa began moving those of its wards most exposed to Hezbollah rocket attacks underground Monday. The major medical center had continued to operate as normal during the war along Israel's northern border, until a Katyusha rocket barrage on Haifa and its suburbs Sunday killed three people and wounded dozens more. Now more than a quarter of its 500 patients are being treated in the facility's large basement with bare concrete walls, no private rooms and relatively few toilets. Not far to the north, the Western Galilee Hospital in the coastal town of Nahariya has been operating underground since the opening days of the conflict. No stranger to Hezbollah rockets, the hospital had already prepared its bomb shelters for such an occasion. A room in the ophthalmology ward on the hospital's top floor attested to critical need for such protected facilities in Israel's north. The AP described the scene of destruction after a Katyusha slammed through a window on July 28, burning the walls and ceiling and perforating nearly everything with the thousands of ball bearings packed into its warhead. But Nahariya and Haifa lie on Israel's Mediterranean coast, and many Israelis trapped in bomb shelters miles to the east are too frightened to travel there to receive needed medical care. So many of northern Is |
