Ghassan Abu Sitta, a prominent British-Palestinian doctor who worked in Gaza's hospitals amidst Israel's war on the besieged coastal enclave, hopes that a testimony he gave to UK police will lead to prosecutions for war crimes.
Abu Sitta, a plastic surgeon specialising in conflict injuries, spent 43 days volunteering in the Gaza Strip as part of a Doctors Without Borders medical team, mostly at the al-Ahli and Shifa hospitals in the north.
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 now due to travel to The Hague this week to meet ICC investigators. Abu Sitta said the intensity of the war was the greatest of the numerous conflicts he has worked in, including others in Gaza, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and south Lebanon.
Israel launched its relentless war and subsequent ground invasion of the Gaza Strip after Hamas carried out an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7. Since then, Israeli forces have killed at least 22,835 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry.
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