Angelina Jolie has shared satellite images showing the scale of destruction in Gaza amid the ongoing Israeli genocide, calling for urgent humanitarian aid and shelter as winter approaches.
The Oscar-winning actress and former UN goodwill ambassador posted a series of before-and-after images on Instagram on Saturday showing neighbourhoods across the enclave devastated by nearly three years of genocide and ongoing attacks despite the so-called US-backed ceasefire.
“You can now open Google Earth and see what was done to Gaza,” Jolie wrote. “Whole neighbourhoods have been reduced to rubble. Homes, schools, universities, hospitals, roads, water and sanitation systems, infrastructure that people depended on to survive have been damaged or destroyed.”
The updated imagery appeared online last week, with many on social media expressing shock at the extent of the devastation.
It shows entire neighbourhoods reduced to rubble and bare ground, with roads, mosques, schools and other landmarks surrounded by widespread destruction.
A UN Satellite Centre assessment cited by Jolie found that 82 per cent of structures in Gaza had been damaged as of June 16, with about two thirds of those assessed as destroyed.
Jolie also highlighted the humanitarian situation facing Palestinians as winter approaches, saying 1.98 million people, or 94 per cent of Gaza's population, require shelter assistance and essential items.
“As winter approaches, 1.98 million people, or 94 per cent of Gaza’s population, need shelter assistance and essential items,” she wrote, adding that aid and shelter materials continued to face restrictions and delays.
“The Google Earth images show the physical destruction with extraordinary clarity. What they cannot show is what it means to live among it, what happened to the families who were killed, and what life is like for those who survived.”
She called for humanitarian aid to reach civilians “at the scale required”, for hospitals to receive medical supplies and for conditions to be created that would allow Palestinians to rebuild their homes, schools, hospitals and communities.
“People need shelter before winter,” she wrote. “Humanitarian aid needs to reach civilians at the scale required. Hospitals need medical supplies.”
Jolie has repeatedly used her platform to draw attention to the plight of Palestinians in Gaza amid the Israeli genocide.
In January, she travelled to Egypt and visited the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing as part of a humanitarian trip focused on aid destined for Gaza. Jolie said at the time that humanitarian access needed to be “sustained, safe and urgently scaled up” to allow aid, fuel and medical supplies into Gaza.
She has also been linked to plans to support children orphaned during the assault.
In October 2023, Israel “cannot justify the innocent lives lost in bombing a civilian population in Gaza that has nowhere to go, no access to food or water, no possibility of evacuation and not even the basic human right to cross a border to seek refuge.”
In another post days later, she described Gaza as an “open-air prison” that was “fast becoming a mass grave” and criticised world leaders for failing to demand a humanitarian ceasefire.
“The destruction is visible. The needs are known,” Jolie wrote in the recent post. “What matters now is whether they are met.”
The post, shared with her approximately 16 million followers, had received about 833,000 likes roughly 11 hours after publication. Now, it has garnered 1.8 million likes.
