British surgeon Prof Ghassan Abu-Sittah flew to Gaza on Monday and has been operating night and day ever since For days now, from dawn to nightfall, Professor Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a top British-Palestinian plastic surgeon, has been wading through operation after operation in Gaza's Al-Shifa and Al-Awda hospitals. He is running on adrenaline and decades of medical experience.
But every so often, something knocks him completely off balance - winds him. Not the relentless blood and gore, though he's seen more catastrophic injuries since he arrived in Gaza on Monday than during any of the multiple wars he's worked through in the past.
Or the tales of entire families being wiped out as the Israeli army pulverises neighbourhood after neighbourhood.
Not even the icy dread among his colleagues that their loved ones are among the dead.
'No, it's the little human things that break your heart,' he says. 'Like when a patient comes in, caked in blood and mud, and you clean them up to assess where the wounds are... but then you see something, the braids, the pink elastic of a hair band, or a bracelet. And suddenly you think, a little girl. Somebody's daughter. With half her face blown away.'