Healthcare workers are protected under international law yet hundreds were detained during the war. Here, some of Gaza's most senior doctors speak out 'No rules': tortured, beaten and humiliated in Israeli detention

Dr Issam Abu Ajwa was in the middle of an emergency procedure at al-Ahli Arab hospital in central Gaza when soldiers came for him.

- Annie Kelly. Hoda Osman and Farah Jallad

"I asked them what they were doing coming into the operating theatre. One of them pointed at me and said: 'Are you Dr Issam Abu Ajwa?' I said: 'Yes, that's me.' And then the beating began."

Still in his surgeons' scrubs, the 63-year-old Abu Ajwa, who had come out of retirement to volunteer at the start of the war, said he was dragged from the operating room, handcuffed, blindfolded and stripped.

Then, along with at least 17 other terrified doctors, nurses and medical staff from the hospital, he was put in a military truck and driven away. He said that less than 24 hours later he was in a detention centre in Israel.

The abuse he endured in Israeli prisons was, he said, brutal and constant. "There were no rules," he said.

"There was a bathroom [in the interrogation room]... he would take a toilet brush and tell me: 'Today we are going to brush your teeth.' I was tied up, blindfolded and three or four of them held my face, pinned it down and kept scrubbing." Abu Ajwa said they broke his teeth: "They have no humanity."

What happened to Gaza's healthcare workers during the Gaza conflict is unprecedented. International law states healthcare workers must be protected from attacks and allowed to provide medical care to all.

Yet by the time the January ceasefire came into effect, more than 1,500 medical staff had been killed and many hospitals bombed to rubble-attacks that a UN Human Rights Council commission said amounted to war crimes.

Hundreds more medical staff who survived the airstrikes and ground assaults were arrested, illegally transferred across the border and disappeared into Israeli prisons, including dozens of doctors.