‘There was just wave after wave’: Gaza doctors recount horror of the last week

Many of the 300 brought into Nasser hospital on Tuesday did not survive. About 85 people died, including about 40 children aged one to 17, said the head of the paediatric and obstetrics department, Ahmed al-Farra. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Early on Tuesday morning, within minutes of the wave of Israeli airstrikes that broke the fragile two-month ceasefire which had brought some respite to Gaza, the emergency room of al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah was full.

“At no point were there less than 65 people in ER, all with open wounds, mainly women and children … The floor was awash with blood,” said Mark Perlmutter, a US-based volunteer orthopaedic surgeon working at the hospital that morning.