SPECIAL REPORT

At ground Zero

Over the past two years, Tess Ingram, 35, has been working in Gaza with UNICEF as it delivers aid and medically evacuates children. Though a ceasefire has been announced, the danger continues – and so does her determination to let the world know what’s happening on the ground

Tess Ingram in a bombed-out school in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, in April 2024. Right Palestinians in the Jabalia Camp in northern Gaza struggle to get food.

Growing up in Perth, Tess Ingram always wanted to leave. The town was so small, and she wanted to see the world – and so she did, by forging a career that fused journalism with her passion for social justice. In 2021, she moved to New York to join UNICEF’s global media team, working on its climate change, migration and Covid campaigns. Two years later, Ingram moved to Amman in Jordan to work at the humanitarian organisation’s regional office.

It was while she was coordinating a response to devastating floods in Libya in late 2023 that Hamas stormed into southern Israel and killed 1195 Jewish people and took another 250 hostage. That date, October 7, would soon be etched into the minds of everyone across the globe. As the Palestinian death toll from Israel’s proclaimed self-defence retaliation climbed to more than 66,000 (including 20,000 children, 245 journalists and more than 520 aid workers), Ingram spoke to marie claire from the heart of the tragedy in Rafah, Gaza. Since this interview, a ceasefire was agreed to and a hostage swap commenced, but a lasting truce remains uncertain. Here, Tess Ingram describes the devastation of the Palestinian homeland.

In April 2024, the north of Gaza was cut off from the south. Families weren’t allowed to travel between, and aid was very infrequently moving between the north and the south. As a result, the people in the north were largely cut off, and children were starving. We were planning a mission to bring malnutrition treatment and medical supplies to Kamal Adwan Hospital in the very north of Gaza City, and also to evacuate an eight-year-old girl, Jana, who was severely malnourished.