Majd al-Shaghnobi can't eat or speak or smile like he used to.

But with his injured mouth covered by a surgical mask, his eyes were beaming as he arrived at London's Heathrow airport on a flight from Cairo, with his mother, brother and little sister.

"I'm happy to be in England and to get treatment," the 15-year-old told me.

He was trying to get humanitarian aid in the Kuwaiti area of northern Gaza in February last year when an Israeli tank shell exploded nearby, shattering his jaw bone and injuring his leg.

"One of my friends helped me and took me to the hospital," he says."They thought I was dead. I had to move my hand to show them that I was alive."

Doctors in Gaza saved his life and Majd spent months in hospital, breathing through a tracheostomy tube, before he was evacuated to Egypt in February this year - with Israel's permission - for further medical treatment.

Now he's in the UK for surgery at Great Ormond Street children's hospital in London to restore the function of his face.

He is the first Gazan child to arrive in the UK for treatment for war injuries, almost two years into a conflict in which more than 50,000 children have reportedly been killed or injured, according to the UN children's charity, Unicef.