Israeli Hospitals Working Under Fire

Israeli patients are hospitalized in the basement of the Rambam hospital in the city of Haifa, northern Israel, where patients have been moved to for their security, Monday Aug. 7, 2006. Hospitals in the war zone are working around the clock to protect their patients from Hezbollah's rocket barrage.(AP Photo/Baz Ratner) (Baz Ratner - AP)

HAIFA, Israel -- In a hospital basement with walls of bare concrete and a ceiling crisscrossed by yellow and blue pipes, a patient just back from heart surgery lay immobile on a bed.

Rambam Hospital in the northern city of Haifa had just moved many patients underground, and workers on ladders stood around the man Monday, hooking up an electric line to power the monitors checking his vital signs.

With northern Israel under Hezbollah rocket bombardment for nearly a month, hospitals in the war zone are working around the clock and under fire to protect those in their care.

Although hundreds of rockets have hit Haifa and its suburbs, Rambam Hospital functioned almost normally until Sunday, when three Haifa residents were killed in an intense barrage.

That's when the hospital decided to clear out the basement, which had been used to store equipment, and move a quarter of its 500 patients _ with their respirators, oxygen tanks and IV drips _ underground.

Dr. Rafael Beyar, the physician overseeing the move, said it took the hospital this long to act because a lull in rocket strikes on the city had led staff to believe "there would be no more attacks on Haifa."

But after Sunday's barrage, he said, "we didn't have a choice."

The patients were lined up in rows Monday, with few curtains to provide privacy and toilets far from the beds.

"There is no order, no room numbers," complained Viki Levi, a nurse in the oncology department. "I don't even have a chair."

Shoshana Berechit, a 58-year-old patient in the neurology ward, said she understood why the move was necessary. "I'd rather be here. At least it's safe," she said. "When I heard the explosions last night it was so strong that I thought the building was falling on us."

In the coastal town of Nahariya, just five miles south of the Lebanon border, the hospital has been functioning underground since just after fighting broke out July 12.

In the hospital's bustling bomb shelter, paper signs taped to the walls _ Urology, Geriatrics, Neurology _ mark the wards.