adminANKARA: Actress Angelina Jolie, who once served as a United Nations (UN) special envoy, highlighted the scale of destruction in the Gaza Strip by sharing before-and-after satellite images showing widespread damage from Israel’s genocide in the Palestinian territory, Anadolu Ajansi (AA) reported .
“You can now open Google Earth and see what has been done to Gaza,” Jolie wrote on Instagram on Saturday, alongside an image comparing some areas of Gaza before the war with their condition this summer.
The images show areas near Al-Qadisiyah School in Rafah city, Khan Younis in southern Gaza and Omar Mukhtar Street in Gaza City, with large parts of the previously densely populated urban area now destroyed.
“Entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble,” Jolie said, adding that homes, schools, universities, hospitals, roads, water supply and sanitation systems and other infrastructure were damaged or destroyed.
Citing UN satellite analysis, Jolie said that as of June, 82 percent of structures in Gaza had been damaged and about two-thirds of the damaged structures were assessed as destroyed.
He also cited humanitarian figures showing that 1.98 million people or 94 percent of the Gaza population need shelter and basic necessities ahead of winter.
“Aid and materials for shelters continue to face restrictions and delays,” he said.
Jolie said the satellite images helped show the physical scale of the destruction, but could not depict the impact on human life.
“What cannot be shown is what it was like to live amidst the destruction, what happened to the families of those who died and what life was like for those who survived,” he said.
He urged that shelter, humanitarian aid and medical supplies be distributed to civilians and that conditions be created to allow Palestinians to rebuild their homes, schools, hospitals and communities.
“The destruction is visible. The needs are known. What matters now is whether those needs are met,” Jolie said.
Jolie, a two-time Oscar winner, served as a UN Goodwill Ambassador and later as a Special Envoy of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for more than 20 years, from 2001 to 2022.
Since October 2023, Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians and injured more than 175,000 others, in addition to destroying about 90 percent of the territory’s infrastructure, according to Palestinian figures.
— BERNAMA-ANADOLU
