Gaza hospitals are reduced to practising “mediaeval medicine”, a British surgeon recently returned from the bombarded Palestinian territory said on Monday.

“It’s absolutely true to describe it as mediaeval medicine. It is what you would hear about or read about what would be happening in Europe maybe 300, 400 years ago,” Dr Khaled Dawas, head of gastrointestinal surgery at University College London Hospitals, said in an interview.

Dawas described dire conditions in Gaza, with medical staff operating virtually without supplies, power supplies intermittent and patients lying on the floor.

He returned at the end of April from his two-week stint to help overstretched Palestinian hospital surgeons — his second wartime stay there, following one in January.

Dawas was in Brussels to describe his experience to European Union officials.

Read the full story here