Doctors in Lebanon fear for their lives as bombs rain down

Published

11 months ago

October 2, 2024

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Doctors at one of the biggest hospitals in southern Lebanon say they’re scared for their lives after a string of nearby attacks within a few days.

Half of the staff have already left. The others have moved into the building and have been living at the hospital for the past ten days.

“You know, it’s hard to work in fear,” Dr Mohammad Taoube tells us, who is head of the hospital’s emergency response (ER).

He adds: “I’m afraid first, about my safety and about my family’s safety because there’s no safe place in Lebanon now.”

Israel-Iran latest: Blasts heard in Beirut

The hospital has seen three close attacks recently, including one which landed outside the emergency department, blocking its entrance and injuring casualties who had just been tended to by ER staff.

“They were injured twice,” says one doctor. “Once from bombs on their home, and then this as they were about to leave.”

The medics believe the nearby attacks are intended to scare them to leave or abandon the hospital.

Dr Abdul Nasser, who is a general surgeon at the hospital (which we are not naming for safety reasons), tells us how he fears the attacks, which are coming ever closer, are a deliberate tactic.

“As soon as the doctors leave then no one will stay in my city,” Dr Nasser says. “And once people leave, it is very difficult to come back.”

He goes on to urge his medical staff to stay in position and keep on working. “Soldiers can’t leave the battle… so likewise doctors, nurses, must stay in the hospitals. I don’t want anyone to leave. We must stay.”

Dr Nasser is a veteran of three previous wars. He tells us: “This is the worst and it will go on for a long time.”

He goes on: “I never left before. I never left the hospital in the previous wars.”

“Yes, I’m scared,” he admits. “But I try to be positive and carry on with my life and just do what I have to do.”

The hospital has taken in about 1,500 war wounded in the past fortnight.

They are no longer operating as they did pre-war but are one of the key emergency centres for casualties, some of whom are evacuated from the frontlines right up against the border.

A family of five are the latest to be brought in from the border village of Alma al Chaab. The youngest, nine-year-old Mariam, is writhing in pain when we arrive with Dr Nasser to see her.

She was sitting with her mother and siblings when a rocket hit the house.

“Everything just fell on me,” she says. Her left leg is bandaged up to the hip.

“She has a double fracture and it’s pinned,” Dr Nasser tells us. “Her arm is broken and she has several wounds.”

Her elder brother is standing nearby. He’s still in his blood-stained clothes – dusty and spattered with large stains of blood.

He is 19 and still reeling from what’s happened. “It’s a big shock. Nothing like this has ever happened to us before,” he says.

The casualties that are most overwhelming to deal with are women and children, the medics tell us.

“It is hard to cope with children’s pain,” says Dr Taoube. “Very, very hard. I hope you never see this. I hope other doctors never have to deal with this. It is very hard.”

Dr Hussam Telleih adds: “We don’t feel safe, the patients don’t feel safe… they [the Israelis] are saying there’s rockets or bombs in or around the hospital from Hezbollah but this isn’t true… we deny all these things.”

Many of the cities and communities in the southern area have emptied out – with the Lebanese government estimating about a million people are on the move and out of their homes – the largest displacement in the country’s history.

But there are still many civilians who can’t or won’t leave their homes.

“Why should I leave?” says Mohammad Halawi. “It’s kind of like collective punishment. They claim they target specific people but they’re killing everyone.”

He is standing in the destroyed block which once housed 32 members of his family in five separate flats. He tells us he thinks the target may have been the house right behind his.

His neighbour was a Hezbollah supporter but he knew very little else about him. He and his family of eight, including children, were all killed in the attack. More than a dozen other homes have been destroyed.

His nephew’s young wife Anwar died – leaving behind two toddlers. Her husband was at work, so he survived. Several other members of the family have been left injured.

The war wounded in the hospital are stabilised as quickly as possible and emergency surgery is carried out if needed.

But patients are then evacuated to other areas considered to be relatively safer, like Beirut.

Finding a safe location in Lebanon is becoming increasingly challenging, though.

“They don’t have hearts, or morals or any humanity,” another injured man in the hospital tells us, his head bound with a bandage.

“If they were hitting military targets, we’d just keep quiet,” said Oussama Najdi who came from Deir Kanoun. “But they hit our house – and we don’t even have one small gun between us.”

Alex Crawford reports from southern Lebanon with cameraman Jake Britton, specialist producer Chris Cunningham and Lebanon producers Jihad Jneid and Sami Zein.

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Death cap mushroom killer Erin Patterson jailed for minimum of 33 years

Published

6 hours ago

September 8, 2025

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Death cap mushroom killer Erin Patterson jailed for minimum of 33 years

An Australian mother who murdered her estranged husband’s parents and aunt by feeding them a beef wellington laced with poisonous mushrooms has been jailed for life with a minimum of 33 years.

Erin Patterson, 50, lured her former parents-in-law Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, and Gail Patterson’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66, to lunch at her home in Leongatha, Victoria, on 29 July 2023.

Mrs Wilkinson’s husband, Reverend Ian Wilkinson, also ate the meal, which was served alongside mashed potatoes and green beans, but survived after receiving a liver transplant and spending months in hospital.

Patterson, a mother-of-two, had made the pastry dish with deadly death cap mushrooms, also known as amanita phalloides.

At the sentencing hearing at the Supreme Court of Victoria in Melbourne, Justice Christopher Beale said the substantial planning of the murders and Patterson’s lack of remorse meant her sentence should be lengthy.

“The devastating impact of your crimes is not limited to your direct victims. Your crimes have harmed a great many people,” he said.

“Not only did you cut short three lives and cause lasting damage to Ian Wilkinson’s health, thereby devastating the
extended Patterson and Wilkinson families, you inflicted untold suffering on your own children, whom you robbed of their beloved grandparents.”

Patterson’s trial in Morwell, southern Australia, heard that she fabricated a cancer diagnosis to use as an excuse not to invite her children, pretending to want to discuss how to break the news to them after the meal.

The four guests fell ill immediately after eating her food. Mrs Wilkinson and Mrs Patterson died on 4 August, and Mr Patterson a day later.

Reverend Wilkinson spent seven weeks in hospital but survived.

In his victim impact statement, he said the poisoned food meant he had to have a liver transplant and was left feeling “half alive”.

Patterson, who maintains her innocence and that she poisoned her victims by accident, also invited the father of her children, Simon Patterson, to the fatal meal.

He declined the invitation.

In his victim impact statement, Mr Patterson said of the couple’s children: “The grim reality is they live in an irreparably broken home with only a solo parent, when almost everyone else knows their mother murdered their grandparents.”

In July, Patterson was found guilty of murdering Don and Gail Patterson, and Heather Wilkinson, and attempting to murder Ian Wilkinson.

What makes death cap mushrooms so lethal?

The death cap is one of the most toxic mushrooms on the planet and is involved in the majority of fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide.

The species contains three main groups of toxins: amatoxins, phallotoxins, and virotoxins.

From these, amatoxins are primarily responsible for the toxic effects in humans.

The alpha-amanitin amatoxin has been found to cause protein deficit and ultimately cell death, although other mechanisms are thought to be involved.

The liver is the main organ that fails due to the poison, but other organs are also affected, most notably the kidneys.

The effects usually begin after a short latent period and can include gastrointestinal disorders followed by jaundice, seizures, coma, and eventually, death.

Previous poisoning attempts left husband ill

Following the guilty verdicts, more details of the case were revealed.

Mr Patterson said he had rejected the lunch invite “out of fear” as he believed his former partner had tried to poison him three times before.

After they separated in 2015, he stopped eating any food she had prepared, having become seriously ill after meals cooked by her.

Reverend Wilkinson also revealed he and the other three guests were served their food on large grey dinner plates, while Patterson served her portion on a smaller, tan-coloured plate.

The nine-week trial attracted intense interest in Australia – with podcasters, journalists and documentary-makers descending on the town of Morwell, around two hours east of Melbourne, where the court hearings took place.

World

Trump says he’s ready to move to second stage of Russia sanctions after Moscow launches large aerial attack

Published

9 hours ago

September 8, 2025

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Trump says he's ready to move to second stage of Russia sanctions after Moscow launches large aerial attack

Donald Trump has said he is ready to move to a second stage of sanctioning Russia, just hours after Moscow launched the largest arial attack of the war so far.

At least four people have been killed, including a mother and a three-month-old baby, with more than 40 others injured, after Russia launched a bombardment of drones overnight.

While on his way to the final of the US Open tennis tournament, the president was asked if he was ready to move to the second stage of punishment for Moscow, to which he replied, “Yes”.

It echoes US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who said additional economic pressure by the United States and Europe could prompt Putin to enter peace talks with Ukraine.

“We are prepared to increase pressure on Russia, but we need our European partners to follow us,” Treasury Secretary Scott told NBC News’ Meet the Press.

Sir Keir Starmer said the latest attack shows Vladimir Putin is “not serious about peace” as he joined other allies in condemning Russia’s actions.

The prime minister said the “brutal” and “cowardly” assault on Kyiv – which resulted in a government building catching fire – proved the Russian leader feels he can “act with impunity”.

Russia attacked Kyiv with 805 drones and decoys, officials said, and Ukraine shot down and neutralised 747 drones and four missiles, the country’s air force has said.

The attack caused a fire to break out at a key government building, with the sky above Kyiv covered in smoke.

Appeasement makes ‘no sense’

Polish premier Donald Tusk said the latest military onslaught showed any “attempts to appease” Putin make “no sense”.

“The US and Europe must together force Russia to accept an immediate ceasefire. We have all the instruments,” Mr Tusk said on Saturday.

Meanwhile the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the Kremlin was “mocking diplomacy”.

Vladimir Putin reportedly wants control of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine – known as the Donbas – as a condition for ending the war.

Russia occupies around 19% of Ukraine, including Crimea and the parts of the Donbas region it seized before the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

But this attack comes after European nations pressed the Russian leader to work to end the war at a virtual meeting of the “coalition of the willing” – a group of countries led by France and Britain seeking to help protect Kyiv in the event of a ceasefire.

Some 26 of Ukraine’s allies pledged to provide security guarantees as part of a “reassurance force” for the war-torn country once the fighting ends, Mr Macron has said.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he is ready to meet Mr Putin to negotiate a peace agreement, and has urged US president Donald Trump to put punishing sanctions on Russia to push it to end the war.

“The world can force the Kremlin criminals to stop the killings – all that is needed is political will,” he said on Sunday.

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Cable snapped in deadly Lisbon funicular crash, report finds

Published

1 day ago

September 6, 2025

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Cable snapped in deadly Lisbon funicular crash, report finds

A report into the deadly Lisbon Gloria funicular crash has said the cable linking the two carriages snapped.

The carriages of the city’s iconic Gloria funicular had travelled no more than six metres when they “suddenly lost the balancing force of the connecting cable”.

The vehicle’s brake‑guard immediately “activated the pneumatic brake as well as the manual brake”, the Office for the Prevention and Investigation of Aircraft Accidents and Railway Accidents said.

But the measures “had no effect in reducing the vehicle’s speed”, as it accelerated and crashed at around 60kmh (37mph), and the disaster unfolded in less than 50 seconds.

Questions have been asked about the maintenance of the equipment, but the report said that, based on the evidence seen so far, it was up to date.

A scheduled visual inspection had been carried out on the morning of the accident, but the area where the cable broke “is not visible without dismantling.”

The Gloria funicular is a national monument that dates from 1914 and is very popular with tourists visiting the Portuguese capital.

It operates between Restauradores Square in downtown Lisbon and the Bairro Alto neighbourhood.

The journey is just 276m (905ft) and takes just over a minute, but it operates up a steep hill, with two carriages travelling in opposite directions.

How the disaster unfolded

At around 6pm on Wednesday, Cabin No.2, at the bottom of the funicular, “jerked backward sharply”, the report said.

“After moving roughly 10 metres, its movement stopped as it partially left the tracks and its trolley became buried at the lower end of the cable channel.”

Cabin No.1, at the top, “continued descending and accelerated” before derailing and smashing “sideways into the wall of a building on the left side, destroying the wooden box [from which the carriage is constructed]”.

It crashed into a cast‑iron streetlamp and a support pole, causing “significant damage” before hitting “the corner of another building”.

Cable failed at top

Analysis of the wreckage showed the cable connecting the cabins failed where it was attached inside the upper trolley of cabin No.1 at the top.

The cable’s specified useful life is 600 days and at the time of the accident, it had been used for 337 days, leaving another 263 days before needing to be replaced.

The operating company regards this life expectancy as having “a significant safety margin”.

The exact number of people aboard each cabin when it crashed has not been confirmed.

Britons killed in disaster

Kayleigh Smith, 36, and William Nelson, 44, died alongside 14 others in Wednesday’s incident, including another British victim who has not yet been named.

Five Portuguese citizens died when the packed carriage plummeted out of control – four of them workers at a charity on the hill – but most victims were foreigners.