People claim the foreign doctors coming back from Gaza are lying. I wish that were the case, because the truth is beyond horrific

First come the bombs. A boom, then 2,000lb worth of destructive force flattening everything in its way. Severing limbs, vaporizing bodies, leaving craters full of blood and rubble where children used to play.

Then come the drones. As the dust settles, the drones start to swarm, picking off any survivors. Armed quadcopters; ingeniously engineered killing machines hunting for human prey. The drones, many of which seem to be autonomous, shoot everything that moves. Even if it’s a helpless child, the drone will sometimes shoot: firing lethal bullets into a soft skull. A scene straight out of a dystopian sci-fi movie set on some desolate dust-covered planet. Except it’s not sci-fi; it’s reality. It’s happening right now in Gaza.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian US columnist