"They are heartbroken' The family man who was killed trying to find food for his daughters

A few weeks before his own death, Bilal el-Essi took a photo of another man's body, sprawled under a women's bike in a Gaza City street, a child's pink backpack fallen from the basket.

- Aseel Mousa Gaza Emma Graham-Harrison Jerusalem

The man was killed trying to find food for his family, Essi told friends and family when he shared the image, a snapshot of the tragedy and desperation of the city.

Essi knew the terrible pain of not being able to feed the people you love, and it got sharper every day that he could not find milk for his two girls, five-year-old Layan and two-year-old Mila, or bread for his father. So when he heard that a rare delivery of food aid might reach north Gaza in the early hours of Thursday, he made his way to al-Rashid street with two brothers, their cousin Moataz el-Essi told the Guardian by phone from Germany. There he said Bilal, a football-mad 28-year-old who was quick with a joke, joined hundreds of people waiting on the coast road in the bitter cold for the food trucks.

Shukri Fleifel, a 21-year-old photographer and filmmaker, was also in the crowd. He had watched Israeli forces open fire on people waiting for aid trucks in the same spot just a few days earlier, he said. But like everyone else in Gaza City, he was hungry.

"There is quite literally nothing available to buy in the markets," Fleifel told the Guardian in a phone interview. "People have been forced to resort to animal feed, but even that is scarce."