The day was well set for drama – a storm blowing in off the Mediterranean, the sea white and the air full of dust in defiance of what was supposed to be spring. At al-Aqsa hospital in the middle of Gaza Strip the wind was whipping through a tent set up in the grounds, chilling the nurses and doctors dressed in their scrubs. This tent had been set up as part of a triage system, a way of managing the expected arrival of many wounded from protests at the fence that marks the boundary with Israel.

It was 30 March, the first anniversary of weekly demonstrations in which more than 190 have been killed and 6,800 shot and injured by Israeli forces. The whole of the Gazan health system was on alert, ready to receive hundreds of injured in a few short hours, just as it had done in the worst days of spring and summer last year.

At around half past two the radio crackled and the word came down: ten cases were on their way. The first siren of the afternoon cut the air, and the orange and white ambulance pulled up and discharged its wounded: one young man clutching a bandage to his neck, cut by shrapnel perhaps; a still man on a stretcher, his head hit by a rubber bullet; and another youth with a bullet in his foot hopping into the tent, grimacing.

The afternoon continued like that, with patients arriving together in little bursts of pain, MSF doctors and nurses assisting the Ministry of Health and another NGO with their assessment and treatment. Many had gunshot wounds to the leg, with blood pooling on white bandages, nurses strapping splints behind the shin to keep broken bones immobilised. Some people were moaning and crying, some were silent, and others – affected by tear gas – were shaking and vomiting.