Angelina Jolie has shared satellite images showing the scale of destruction in Gaza, 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 war.
“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 on online last week, with many on social media expressing shock at the extent of the devastation. Google has not said when the images were published or made available.
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, 51, 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.”
Angelina Jolie's support for Palestinians
The latest post is not the first time Jolie has used her public profile to draw attention to the plight of Palestinians in Gaza.
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.
During the visit, she met Egyptian Red Crescent workers and other humanitarian groups and toured warehouses containing aid, including medical supplies.
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 conflict.
In October, The National reported that Palestinian activist Samer Sinijlawi said Jolie intended to establish a large SOS village for orphans in Gaza as part of wider efforts to rebuild the enclave.
“I’ve been aware of the intention of Angelina Jolie to do a huge SOS village for orphans in Gaza,” Sinijlawi said during an online panel convened by Germany's Candid Foundation.
He said prominent individuals could help launch initiatives alongside government-led reconstruction efforts rather than waiting solely for states to act. Jolie's agent was contacted for comment on the reported plans at the time.
Jolie has been an outspoken voice on the conflict since its early weeks.
In October 2023, she condemned the Hamas-led attacks in Israel while saying they could not justify the loss of civilian life in Gaza.
“What happened in Israel is an act of terror, but that 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,” she wrote.
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.
Jolie's advocacy follows more than two decades of humanitarian work focused particularly on refugees and people displaced by conflict.
She worked with the UN refugee agency for more than 20 years, first as a goodwill ambassador and later as a special envoy, before stepping down from the role in 2022 to pursue humanitarian and human rights work more broadly.
Her latest intervention comes as satellite imagery has once again brought the physical transformation of Gaza into focus.
“The destruction is visible. The needs are known,” Jolie wrote. “What matters now is whether they are met.”
