The largest hospital in northern Israel shifted its entire operation to its cavernous underground parking lot in the city of Haifa on Monday, a day after rockets fired by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah exploded a few kilometres away.

Hours after the government gave the order to relocate the multistorey Rambam Health Care Campus, entire wards, as well as the emergency room, triage, maternity, cardiology and other departments, had been moved three levels below ground and were up and running.

Three Israelis, who had sustained moderate injuries early on Sunday in an attack on the city of Kiryat Bialik, which is just northeast of Haifa, were treated at the hospital’s new premises and released.

Northern Israel’s medical emergency plan, developed over more than a decade, was ready for an escalation of the cross-border conflict between Israel and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. The idea to move the hospital below ground in case of an attack was hatched in 2006 — the year of the war in Lebanon between Hezbollah and Israel — and building work began four years later, according to David Ratner, a spokesman for the hospital.

“The whole idea was to build a parking lot into which all the needs for a functioning hospital were embedded,” he said. The teaching hospital was currently treating 650 people in its new location and had the capacity for 1,200, he said.

Israel last year ordered around 80,000 people to evacuate from their homes close to the Lebanese border after Hezbollah began firing missiles and drones into Israel in support of the Hamas-led attacks from Gaza on October 7 in the south.

The conflict has escalated significantly in the past week, and Lebanon’s health ministry on Monday ordered hospitals to suspend all elective surgeries in order to make room for the wounded.

At the Rambam hospital on Monday, doctors and nurses were treating patients in full-size hospital beds positioned between two white lines that had previously marked parking spots on vinyl flooring. Lighting from the parking lot lit the space, and arrows noted driving directions.