The “White Walkers” of Gaza

0:00Today on State of the World, the White Walkers of Gaza.

0:08You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories, up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. The UN says people are starving in Gaza. For months, Palestinians there have been going hungry. Israel has been restricting food entering the territory as it battles Hamas. In today's episode, we're going to a distribution site in northern Gaza to see the risks people are willing to take in search of food. And a warning, you're going to hear the sound of gunfire and descriptions of war in this story. With reporting from NPR's Anas Baba in Gaza, here's Aya Batraoui.

0:48Trucks with the UN World Food Program have just rolled into northern Gaza, carrying with them large sacks of flour. This flower is like gold. It keeps families holding on just a while longer. And this white gold is drawing thousands of people, knowingly, within range of Israeli troops every day. Mohamed Abou Tarabish is among the thousands running to the WFP's trucks between rounds of Israeli gunfire. He tells NPR producer Anas Baba, show us mercy. I'm just trying to feed my kids. Baba asks him, what about the gunfire?

1:27Abul Tarebish says, gunfire or not, I will die to feed them. He says his wife's nine months pregnant, and that every day he asks her to forgive him if something happens to him. NPR obtained a recent breakdown of death tolls from Gaza's health ministry. It shows that since June 12th, when the first aid trucks were allowed into northern Gaza after a two-month Israeli blockade. More than 530 people have been killed trying to get food aid just from this northern border crossing known as Zikim. This is the price of flour a young man yells out. We're dying and tanks are firing at us, he says. It's a mad scramble to grab flour off trucks here.

2:16People are shot by Israeli snipers and tanks, knifed by looting gangs and sometimes crushed under the trucks. The World Food Programme says Israel only permits a few dozen trucks a day to enter through Zakim, leading to desperation and looting. The Israelis started to open fire on all of the people in Zakim at the meantime, and we are going to take some cover. NPR's producer in Gaza, Anas Baba, knows the risks of Zakim. In one day last month, he documented from the morgues 86 people who'd been killed there. Baba went to Zakim several times to observe from a distance before bringing us this reporting.

2:49I can hear that the bullets at the meantime are whistling in front of our heads. Every single person at the meantime in Zakeem and all of them at the meantime are laying on the ground or taking cover. This is the price that the Palestinian needs to pay here in order to take the sack of law or the humanitarian aid. Israel's military repeatedly says its troops only fire warning shots when crowds come too close. Those shots ring overhead as Om Hamdi al-Nahal ducks behind a sandy hill for cover.

3:23She says who's going to feed us and feed our kids at home? What are they still negotiating and talking about, she says, referring to failed ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel. Our kids, our flowers are dying out here, she says. None of the WFP aid that enters through northern Gaza reaches warehouse. It's all taken by hungry crowds.

3:49Out of breath and exhausted, Al-Lahal says there's nowhere to turn to. She says, if I don't face death, no one will feed my kids. Zikim is considered a militarized zone of Gaza that's off-limits to Palestinians. But people who are closest to the border, where tanks are, have the best chance of getting flour. Thousands of people walk for miles on dirt roads, past flattened neighborhoods, to reach this expansive corridor of rubble and trash. Those who come away with a sack of flour are covered in its white dust. Palestinians call them the White Walkers, a reference to the chilling, zombie-like characters of the far north in Game of Thrones.

4:26I can see women. I can see elderlies. I can see little girls and even small boys. And all of them are trying just to get any sack of flour. I have been running for the past 30 minutes because the bullets stopped and now the bullets, I do believe, is going to return in five to two minutes. I didn't have many time. Just like the others. As Bubba rushes to safer ground, he films an unconscious, wounded boy being carried in an empty sack of flour. Others wounded are carried on empty flour crates. He sees a 16-year-old boy shot in the leg. They are trying to take him to the hospital on the top of the truck that all of the people looted in Zakeem corridor itself.

5:14And he was trying to talk to him. He wants to talk.

5:22Khaled al-Bilbasi tells him he was walking with flour when he got shot in the leg. He says he's got no choice but to come to Zakeem because there's no food at home. The teenager says his family's been killed in the war. It's just him and his brother now.

5:38He cries out in pain as the truck moves. That day at Zakhim, Gaza's health ministry recorded 23 people killed and nearly 100 wounded at this corridor. Tens of thousands of people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. But for the first time in this war, the health ministry says there are days where more people are killed trying to get food than in strikes. That was NPR's Aya Betraoui with reporting from Anas Baba in Gaza. You can see video on us recorded from the aid site. You'll find the link in our episode description or in NPR's Instagram feed.

6:16And that's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.