Gaza doctors face 'most difficult test' in prioritising patients

Fourteen-year-old Mohammed Wael Helles has been waiting for surgery on a serious spinal injury caused by an Israeli airstrike for nearly two months, one of thousands of Gazans waiting for urgent treatment in Gaza's battered health system.

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Helles was a top student with aspirations of becoming a doctor when he was wounded weeks before a ceasefire that paused two years of warfare. The attack, which killed the driver of his vehicle, tore his spinal cord and fractured three vertebrae.

"I'm still young, at the start of my life," he said from his hospital bed in Khan Younis after waking from his injury 50 days ago to find he was partially paralysed.

Istael's devastating military campaign in Gaza has injured at least 70,000 Gazans, according to local health authorities, and pushed most Gazans into unsanitary tent camps ravaged by disease, adding to the strains on a shattered health system.