Youssef Assaf stepped out of his ambulance to help people. For that act of mercy, he was killed by an airstrike.
The Lebanese Red Cross paramedic was on a rescue mission in Majdal Zoun, southern Lebanon, on March 9 when he exited his vehicle to assist the wounded following an initial strike. According to NPR’s reporting, a second attack hit moments later. His funeral in Tyre drew hundreds of first responders in their bright red uniforms, marching behind his coffin while his mother’s cries cut through the procession.
Assaf’s death is not an isolated tragedy. It’s part of a documented pattern that has left Lebanese officials, human rights organizations, and international health bodies asking uncomfortable questions about whether first responders are being deliberately targeted.
The Numbers Tell a Story
Lebanon’s government reports that at least 54 health workers have been killed during the current Israeli invasion, part of a death toll exceeding 1,400 people. That statistic alone deserves scrutiny, but the clustering of deaths raises sharper concerns.
On the weekend of March 28-29, ten health workers were killed in a single 24-hour period by Israeli attacks, according to Lebanon’s government and the World Health Organization. Lebanon’s current minister of public health, Rakan Nassereddine, has initiated a complaint to the UN Security Council. For Dr. Firass Abiad, Lebanon’s former health minister, the math is damning: “When you have 10 first responders killed within a period of almost 24 hours, it’s very difficult to say this is an accident.”
That’s not rhetorical frustration. That’s a medical professional describing statistical improbability.
The Protocol That Didn’t Protect
The Red Cross follows a specific safety procedure designed to prevent exactly what happened to Assaf. Whenever ambulances respond to an attack, they transmit their coordinates to United Nations peacekeepers, who relay the information to Israel. The system exists on paper because everyone agreed: health workers deserve protection.
On March 9, they followed that protocol. It didn’t save Assaf’s life.
After his death, Alexy Nehme, the Red Cross’ director of emergency medical services, sent a message back through the same UN channel to Israeli officials. His question was simple and devastating: “Why? Why us?”
The Israeli military’s response to NPR was that it targeted a “Hezbollah military-use building” and that personnel arriving “in the seconds between when the munitions were fired and the moment of impact” were not intentionally targeted. The military stated it was unaware of Red Cross presence and “certainly did not intend to strike them.”
But unintentional strikes don’t absolve the pattern.
What Human Rights Organizations Found
Human Rights Watch documented three attacks in 2024 on paramedics in Beirut and southern Lebanon that killed 14 health workers. According to HRW researcher Ramzi Kaiss, “we found that these attacks amount to apparent war crimes. Health workers are protected under the laws of war. In the attacks we investigated, we did not find evidence that the facilities and ambulances were being used for military purposes.”
Amnesty International echoes the accusation, stating that Israel is using the “same deadly playbook” to carry out “unlawful attacks on health facilities and health workers” without accountability.
The World Health Organization’s Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on social media: “This cannot become the norm.”
The Hezbollah Complication
Here’s where the picture becomes genuinely complicated. Israel argues that Hezbollah systematically exploits medical infrastructure, transporting weapons in ambulances and using health facilities as cover for military operations. Unlike the Red Cross, Hezbollah’s own ambulance service doesn’t notify Israel of its movements.
Mohammed Farhat, operations director for the Islamic Health Authority which oversees Hezbollah’s ambulance service, describes a tactical nightmare: double-tap strikes. Israel hits a target, first responders arrive to help, then another strike follows. The Israeli military denies this as policy, though it told NPR it sometimes conducts additional strikes “when the objective of the initial strike was not achieved.” That distinction matters less to a paramedic calculating whether it’s safe to approach a victim.
Farhat says they’ve had to change tactics. “Instead of sending in 10 or 20 people into the heart of a targeted building in the first four or five minutes, we send three or four to get close, go in, and assess.” He denies transporting weapons and argues that health workers deserve protection regardless of their political affiliation. That’s a reasonable position, even if it’s complicated by documented Hezbollah operations.
The Weight It Takes
At the Lebanese Red Cross dispatch center in southern Beirut, operators field about 1,500 calls per day. George Ghafary, the lead dispatcher, stays on the line with both callers and ambulance crews, tracking them by GPS as they move into active strike zones.
“After a recent airstrike, a woman called, saying she and her children were injured. They were clearly suffering from severe trauma. We stayed on the phone with them the whole time, until the ambulance reached them,” Ghafary recalls. But the war itself has become the injury. “These are my colleagues, my friends. I can’t show the team my worry and anxiety, but deep down, it’s there.”
That’s the human cost that statistics miss. First responders are supposed to run toward danger. They’re trained for it. They’re built for it. But when the system designed to protect them fails repeatedly, training and courage become acts of faith in a system that may not hold.
The question isn’t just whether attacks on health workers are intentional or accidental anymore. It’s whether a pattern of deaths, whether deliberate or negligent, becomes indistinguishable from targeting when you refuse to change the behavior causing it.
