As told to Helen Pidd North of England editor

Mohamed Ismail Aly, 44, is a consultant burns and plastic surgeon at the Royal Manchester children’s hospital

I got the call at about midnight [on Monday 22 May] – it woke me up. It was the hospital switchboard informing me that there had been a major incident and I had to come in. They didn’t say what had happened but I checked on the BBC website and saw that something had happened at the arena.

On the way to the hospital, I was listening to the local radio and they didn’t seem to know quite what had happened. Some people were suggesting that one of the speakers had blown at the arena.

I operated on my first patient at around 1am on Tuesday morning. When I saw my first patient, it was very clear we were dealing with injuries from a bomb.

Read more