The only thing that kept Dr Ahmed Muhanna going during his 22 months inside Israeli prisons and detention centres was dreaming of his return to his family and to Gaza. When he was finally released after 665 days as a prisoner, he arrived home to find every place he had returned to in his memories had been obliterated.

While in prison, he and the other inmates were “completely cut off from the outside world”, he says. When he was released he was driven over the border and through Gaza to his hospital, the al-Awda. The scale of the destruction he saw “made my skin crawl … my chest tightened and my tears began to flow”.

When Muhanna, one of Gaza’s most senior anaesthesiologists and emergency care consultants, was detained by Israeli forces in December 2023, the al-Awda hospital was under siege.

Now, barely three months after his release, despite the ceasefire officially still in place, he says he and his colleagues are facing another onslaught as the devastated healthcare system battles to cope with a wave of disease and preventable deaths.

Muhanna says he returned to a hospital hollowed out of staff, medical equipment and medicine. While in detention, 75 of his colleagues at al-Awda were killed, he says. Since 7 October 2023, 1,200 Palestinian healthcare workers have been killed and 384 detained by Israel’s military, according to the NGO Healthcare Workers Watch.