Inside the ‘quadruple tap’ strike on Lebanon paramedics

Ali Mouallem has likely seen the video of his ambulance being hit by an Israeli missile hundreds of times now.

But when he showed it once again to a CBC News crew visiting Nabatieh, in south Lebanon, his hands were still shaking.

“Look at what’s in the [ambulance] — the clothes we are wearing, we are only civilians and ambulance teams!” said Mouallem, 26.

“We are doing humanitarian work, far from any politics,” he said, suggesting the video refutes Israeli claims that Lebanese paramedics are helping Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Shia militant group funded and controlled by Iran.

On April 15, one day before Hezbollah and Israel agreed to a ceasefire, Mouallem and his team found themselves in the most lethal situation any of them had ever faced.

It ended with four paramedics dead.

Risk for paramedics intensifies

As the day began, Mouallem’s colleague, Fadel Hamadi, knew that the risks for paramedics responding to calls in south Lebanon were intensifying. 

There had been repeated reports of civil defence and ambulance teams coming under Israeli fire when they arrived at rescue scenes.

So, Hamadi put on a GoPro camera — not for social media, but to capture what happened and use the footage as a form of insurance against Israeli claims.

Israel’s military has frequently alleged — without providing proof — that Lebanese paramedics are misusing their humanitarian status by moving weapons and ammunition that are later used in attacks on Israel.

“Documenting the strike we were in proves the opposite of what has been said,” Hamadi told CBC News. “It is good that I am showing the world.”

Based on descriptions from those who were there, the deadly sequence began with an Israeli strike in or near the town of Mayfadoun, southwest of Nabatieh.

The first strike reportedly hit a building. 

The second hit the first rescuers who arrived at the scene. 

The third hit their backup. 

By the time Mouallem arrived during the fourth strike, the road was already a graveyard of ambulances.

‘Quadruple tap’

In military terms, a “double tap” is when two missiles are fired at the same target in quick succession. It’s a known method of hitting first responders, thereby making it harder for the original target to survive.

But in this instance, the strike, described by various media outlets and Lebanese government officials as a “quadruple tap,” represents a significant escalation.

Mouallem’s teammate, Mahdi Abu Zaid, had just put an injured man in the back of an ambulance and slammed the back door shut when the fourth and final Israeli missile struck nearby, spraying the vehicle with shrapnel.

Abu Zaid was hit in the abdomen. Mouallem says his friend died with his head slumped on his shoulder.

“We were not targeted by mistake. They were directly targeting paramedics,” he said. 

Chief paramedic’s son killed in strike

While the high-pitched whine of Israeli drones still echoes across southern Lebanon, the paramedics at the Nabatieh headquarters can catch their breath — at least for the moment.

At the team’s base next to a hospital, flak jackets and helmets are prepped and ready to go. On the floor, exhausted young men rest on mattresses, trying to catch up on sleep.

Nabatieh’s chief paramedic Mohammad Sleiman knew better than anyone the risks that his paramedics were taking when they left that day.

Less than three weeks earlier, he buried his 16-year-old son Joud, after he, too, was killed in an Israeli strike on one of his paramedic teams. 

“Joud started with us in the ambulance service when he was six years old,” Sleiman said. “He used to come with us and join the guys in all their activities.”

On March 24, the teenager was volunteering alongside another paramedic, Ali Jaber, 21. They were riding a moped, following an ambulance with its lights flashing. 

The small convoy was delivering food in Nabatieh, just a few hundred metres from his father’s base, when an Israeli drone flying above fired at them, killing the pair instantly.

“I called Joud, the guys called Ali, but there was no reception,” said Sleiman. “We said ‘Let’s go down.’ I got in the ambulance and went out. Unfortunately, Ali and Joud were killed.”

His son’s charred and blackened moped now sits under a tarp near the site of the attack.

Sleiman says Israel’s motivation for targetting his team members “may be a psychological tactic to stop paramedics from doing their jobs,” adding: “There is nothing else, no other explanation.”

In the days after the four deaths in Mayfadoun, the Nabatieh ambulance team posted the video of the strike on the internet. 

The team included commentary on what precisely had happened — and they froze the video in the midst of the attacks to show what was in the back of their ambulance.

Sleiman says it was just injured people and a stretcher, which he says shows that Israel Defence Force (IDF) claims about ambulances serving dual purpose are made up.

“That is a big lie and the video proves that,” he said. “The cameras show these vehicles only have ambulance equipment in them.” 

Hamadi says he considers what happened to his team earlier this month to be a war crime, as international law prohibits targeting medical teams, no matter what their affiliation. 

And he wants his video to be used as evidence.

“You can know now who’s right and who’s wrong,” he said. “Even though it is a short video, it clearly proved the truth.”

Israel’s military has not directly addressed the events of that day, nor did the IDF provide a response when CBC News requested comment.

Israel’s military has told other outlets that the incident is under review and again accused Hezbollah of using ambulances to bring weapons and ammunition to its fighters. 

While more than 2,400 people in Lebanon have been killed since Hezbollah launched rockets at northern Israel on March 2, dragging the country into the U.S. and Israel-Iran war, the country’s medical and rescue workers have suffered disproportionately, with more than 100 killed on duty.

In Israel, rocket attacks by Hezbollah and Iran’s forces on Israeli communities have killed 24 people. 

Civil defence workers also targeted

Lebanon’s paramedics aren’t the only group of rescuers who’ve been targeted. 

So have members of the country’s civil defence organizations. Many of them are workers tasked with pulling people out from the rubble of fallen buildings.

In the city’s southern suburbs, known as Dahieh, where Hezbollah has considerable support, rescue worker Ali Osman, 26, told CBC News that civil defence teams try to hang back as long as possible before entering areas that have just been hit to avoid potential double-tap strikes.

He says everyone is aware that such delays could harm those trapped under rubble, but they feel they have no other choice.

“When the Israelis strike here, we don’t respond immediately, we wait for the situation to become clearer,” he said. “Then we go down and we finish our work.” 

Osman says if Israel’s military is trying to catch the civil defence teams helping Hezbollah, it’s a flawed strategy.

“We are useless to [Hezbollah]. Military issues are separate from rescuing.” 

At the Nabatieh paramedic station, when the medics are asked if they believe this ceasefire will hold, they sigh and shrug. They say it’s out of their control and they have a job to do regardless. 

Mouallem and his team are already back on the road, wearing lapel buttons with the photos of their slain colleagues — and with their camera batteries fully charged.