During his time in Gaza, he worked around the clock at the Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli hospitals, operating on victims of Israel’s intensive shelling and ground operation, which is estimated to have killed 14,800 people so far.
Prof Abu-Sittah believes up to 900 children in Gaza have undergone an amputation on their limbs since the beginning of the war, and he told the Telegraph after a press briefing on Monday that he had carried out this procedure on six children alone in one evening.
“By day four or five [of Israel’s military campaign], half of my operating list, which was around ten to twelve cases every day, were children,” he said.
“When you start operating on children, you know this is going to be around one of 10 to 15 surgeries a child will need before they reach adult age [and their bodies stop growing].”
Prof Abu-Sittah described how many of the people on his operation table were victims of fragmentary missiles fired by the Israelis and required guillotine amputations in “very tough” parts of their bodies – such as the mid thigh, where medics had to saw through a web of thick muscles, and the femur, the strongest bone in the body.
Fragmentation bombs are particularly deadly, as they erupt into a shower of small and fast-moving lethal metal fragments upon impact.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/terror-and-security/gaza-hospital-surgeon-ghassan-abu-sittah-child-amputations/