I said 'I'm sorry' as I zipped the boy, 9, into a body bag

DAYS after arriving in Gaza, Sam Sears was given the job of putting children into body bags.

- BY SIMON MURPHY

Two boys of nine and 10 had been killed and a third, aged about eight, had been hit by shrapnel.

They were lying on beds in a field hospital run by charity UK-Med which is helped by volunteers like Sam.

"I definitely said to this young nine-year-old, 'I'm sorry', as I zipped up the body bag," he says.

Asked why they were the words that came to him, Sam says: "I think just because his demise, his end, came because of this whole war going on and he didn't deserve it."

The silver lining to the story is that the third boy survived after surgery.

"The next day, I found out he was sitting up in bed and expected to make a full recovery," Sam says. "It shows why we have to do what we do."

The harrowing and unforgettable scenes came during Sam's three-week stint in the tiny territory where more than 60,000 Palestinians are believed to have died so far in the latest war.

It is a far cry from his paramedic job at East Midlands Ambulance Services NHS Trust in Northamptonshire.

The 44-year-old is no stranger to tough environments as a veteran of deployments to Ukraine, Rwanda, Turkey and Sierra Leone for UK-Med.

Nevertheless, Gaza was so much worse than he anticipated.

"The destruction and devastation is just unprecedented," Sam says.

Drones and gunfire provided a chilling soundtrack for his days - and the flow of injuries was constant.