“ An 11-year-old child with his leg hanging on by a strip of skin was in one operating theatre where we were attempting a vascular repair, with an eight-year-old shot in the groin in a holding bay, when seven more arrived, also critically injured by sniper fire.”

These are the words of a top British orthopaedic surgeon, normally operating in a state of the art theatre at a London teaching hospital. He was reporting on a typical day of work at Shifa Hospital in the besieged Gaza Strip, where along with scores of other international surgeons, he volunteers to save the lives of Gaza protesters – and, increasingly, their limbs.