BEIRUT: Youssef Assaf was in a Lebanese Red Cross ambulance when it was targeted by an Israeli strike near Tyre, in southern Lebanon. The 35-year-old paramedic died of his wounds two days later.
“I was called around 10:30 p.m. and told that he was wounded and in the hospital,” his wife, Jeanne d’Arc Boutros, said from northern Lebanon, where she had fled to a relative’s home.
“I knew my husband was strong and could endure. I did not react at all — I just kept praying and repeating in my heart that nothing bad would happen to him,” the 32-year-old schoolteacher said.
But Assaf died within two days.
He was one of 38 Lebanese health care workers killed in Israeli strikes since the start of the current war on March 2, according to the Health Ministry.
