'People shouted "I can't see!" Families hunt for relatives as hospitals are overwhelmed

Two beeps and a pause was the only warning Yusuf got. He turned around to face the noise, thinking it was one of his medical instruments, but instead was met with an explosion, throwing shrapnel into his leg.

- William Christou

His patient fared much worse.

"The patient lost consciousness; he started bleeding. His face, neck and lips were burned. He had knife-like cuts, as if he was hit by a rocket," said Yusuf, a doctor from Beirut speaking under a pseudonym, while waiting for an injured friend outside a Beirut hospital on Tuesday night. He rolled up his trouser leg to show a small wound, the remnants of his patient's exploded pager.

Tuesday's attacks, which targeted pagers used by members of Hezbollah and have been attributed to Israel, left at least 2,800 injured and 12 dead, including two children and a healthcare worker.

Yesterday, walkie-talkies being used by Hezbollah members for communication began to explode across Lebanon in a similar fashion to the previous day's attacks. A video showed a blast suddenly striking a Hezbollah member during a funeral in Beirut for a fighter killed on Tuesday, knocking him down and sending the crowd running. At least 14 people were killed by the walkie-talkie detonations and hundreds more were injured.

The wide-ranging attacks across two days extended all the way to Syria, where at least four Hezbollah members were injured by pager explosions in al-Qalamoun, Damascus and Seida Zeinab, according to Fadel Abdulghani, the founder of the Syrian Network for Human Rights.

News of Tuesday's attack at first trickled in, starting with information regarding a security incident in Beirut, then the southern city of Tyre, and the Bekaa valley. Soon it was all over the news, with pictures of people with mangled limbs and bloodied faces emerging from all over the country. The sound of ambulance sirens started and would continue non-stop, deep into the night.