International Red Cross deploys surgeons in Lebanese hospitals

The International Committee of the Red Cross has deployed a team of surgeons to treat war-related wounds at the government-run Rafik Hariri University Hospital in Beirut.

Many of the patients have been evacuated from hospitals in the south as Israeli strikes intensify there. About 1.2 million people have fled southern and eastern Lebanon.

The head of the ICRC in Lebanon, Simone Casabianca-Aeschlimann, said Wednesday that the country's health care system is overstretched because of a large influx of wounded patients.

“The fact that we do not know how this conflict is going to evolve and what is going to happen for us is very trying,” she told The Associated Press.

Earlier this month, ICRC delivered medical supplies including war surgery kits to treat some 2,000 critical patients across over a dozen hospitals in Lebanon.

At least 2,350 people have been killed and more than 10,900 have been wounded since the conflict began a year ago, most of them since late September, Lebanese authorities say.