Thousands of people have been left with “almost identical injuries” after pagers and walkie-talkies exploded across Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday, a doctor has said.

“Almost exclusively the pager explodes in the hand while people are trying to read the message, so we’re getting mangled hands and penetrating injuries and blast injuries to the face and the eyes,” Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah while answering questions from reporters..

The “catastrophic thing”, he said, is “almost all of them will end up with some permanent disability”.

Explaining the extent of the injuries, he said: “The hands for the overwhelming majority have been mangled, with a lot of amputations. 

“And a lot of the shrapnel has gone into the eyes, with loss of eyesight complete in one eye and some unfortunately both eyes.”

He added: “We have now thousands of people who will need major reconstructive surgical procedures and rehabilitation for years to come.”

Many of the victims were in confined spaces, he said, while others were wounded because they were sitting next to someone with a pager.

“So what you have is a collection of people of all ages, men and women, who have come in with that blast injury. We’ve had women, we’ve had some children, who were in the house when some pagers exploded.”

Speaking of the two children who were killed, he said they picked up the pager when it beeped and that was how they were killed.

Ambulance workers also had walkie-talkies that the army had to come and detonate, he said.

Dr Abu-Sittah, who worked in Gaza during the early part of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, was also asked about accusations that by carrying out his work he was siding with groups proscribed as terrorist organisations in the UK and US.

He said it was part of the Hippocratic Oath to treat anyone who is wounded.

“I would be remiss, even under General Medical Council rules, to deny people medical treatment based on their political beliefs or religious beliefs or anything,” he said.

He also claimed that such accusations were part of a “demonisation” of medical staff working in places such as Gaza.