What do you see in the satellite image above? Looks like a colony of ants, doesn’t it? But that’s not what it is.

This is an image of probably the worst human suffering that the millennial and Gen Z generations have witnessed anywhere around the world. Captured in Gaza, it shows people surviving famine desperately surrounding a group of aid trucks to receive basic food items, such as flour.

The image was captured by US geospatial firm Planet Labs at a location about 200m north of the Israeli military partition known as the Morag corridor, which runs across the Gaza Strip and separates the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah, first geolocated by open-source researcher Jaks Godin.

The queue of aid seekers can be seen stretching for about 2 km north of the trucks towards Khan Younis city.

Similar scenes have been seen in photos and videos circulating on social media. The satellite image captures the scale and extent of the chaos and desperation at aid distribution sites.

FAMINE IN GAZA

Charity Doctors Without Borders has warned that 25 per cent of young children and pregnant women in Gaza are now malnourished. It has called out Israel for “deliberate use of starvation as a weapon” and criticised the high number of fatalities seen at aid distribution sites.

A UNICEF official has said the lack of food has forced children to look for food in piles of garbage.

“Children are dead, pale, turning to skeletons, only bones. They forgot what eggs, meat and fruits are. The men are all without jobs. There is nothing to live by. Life here is completely lost,” a mother of three told Reuters in Gaza. She also lamented the lack of fuel to cook food.

The woman, Amal Abu Assi, also said people run for long distances to get the aid. “They come back humiliated, wounded and beaten up.”

Israel has been accused of widespread atrocities against civilians in Gaza. It has severely restricted the entry of food aid trucks into Gaza for months, causing life-threatening malnutrition and deaths.

To overcome this challenge, several countries have dropped aid from planes into Gaza. But that is not efficient, Gazans say.

A Palestinian man narrated to Reuters an incident when an aid package landed on a roof. “People attacked the house. This is not the way to distribute aid. People attacked us for the sake of an aid parcel, people are hungry,” said Mohammed Aboul Eineed.

BULLET FOR BREAD

In recent weeks, aid distribution sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is backed by the US and Israel, have been high number of deaths among civilians.

As per Gaza’s health ministry, 600 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid from GHF sites.

An analysis by the UK’s Sky News found that deaths of Gazans increased significantly on days when the GHF distributed aid. The charity often announced aid distributions with less than 30 minutes’ notice.

– Ends

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