Ghassan Abu Sitta, a plastic surgeon specialising in conflict injuries, spent 43 days volunteering in the besieged Palestinian territory, mostly at the Al-Ahli and Shifa hospitals in the north, hopes that testimony he has given to UK police will lead to prosecutions for war crimes, AFP reports.

The 54-year-old has already testified to the Met, the UK’s biggest police force, about the injuries he saw and the kinds of weapons used, as part of the evidence being gathered for an International Criminal Court probe into alleged war crimes committed by both sides.

He is due to travel to The Hague this week to meet ICC investigators. Abu Sitta said the intensity of the conflict was the greatest of the numerous conflicts he has worked in, including others in Gaza, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and South Lebanon.

“It’s the difference between a flood and a tsunami — the whole scale is completely different,” he told AFP during an interview in London on Sunday.

“Just the sheer number of the wounded, the size of the calamity, the number of children killed, the intensity of the bombing, the fact that within days of the war starting Gaza’s health system was completely overwhelmed.”