Yorkshire-born Naveed Yasin was sworn at and abused by van driver after spending two days operating on victims of Monday’s attack

A surgeon who had helped save the lives of victims of the Manchester bombing was racially abused on his way back to hospital, it has been reported.

Naveed Yasin, a trauma and orthopaedic surgeon – who had spent the previous two days in demanding surgery, was driving back to the Salford royal hospital to continue to help blast victims when a van driver pulled up beside him and hurled abuse, according to the Sunday Times.

The surgeon was stuck in traffic when he saw a van veering towards him, horn blaring. The white, middle-aged driver then lowered his window and yelled obscenities at Yasin.

The van driver said: “You brown, Paki bastard. Go back to your country, you terrorist. We don’t want you people here. Fuck off!”

The incident shocked the surgeon, who was born and brought up in Keighley, West Yorkshire and lives in Manchester with his wife and two daughters especially after two such gruelling days at work.

He told the Sunday Times: “I can’t take away the hatred he had for me because of my skin colour ... and the prejudices he had associated with this. Manchester is better than this. We Mancunians will rebuild, we will rebuild the fallen buildings, the broken lives and the social cohesion we once had.”

He and his family could have been caught up in the bombing themselves as they had considered going to the Ariana Grande concert as his eldest daughter is a big fan. In the end they decided not to because the event was on a school night.

“It so easily could have been us,” he said. “Terror attacks don’t discriminate against race or religion but this [the racial abuse] didn’t discriminate either.”

The surgeon said that he and his colleagues had found working on the victims of Monday’s suicide bombing at Manchester Arena, which left 22 dead, to be an “extremely profound and traumatising experience”.

“The injuries patients have had include horrific [damage] to limbs, typical bomb-blast type injuries. Open fractures. Patients with penetrating injuries from shrapnel. It’s soul-destroying to see what the families involved are going through. And as a father, what I have witnessed is horrific.”