Mazen, a truck driver, had not been on the dusty road out of southern Gaza long when he heard shouting. Crowds of people appeared in the barren landscape of tanks and crushed buildings, swelling around the UN aid convoy he was driving in.
Mazen watched as they began unloading supplies, climbing atop his truck. Some were so close he could see their faces through the window.
"They're driven by the famine," he said. "They forget the military, and that they're in a red zone that is deeply dangerous, and they're overcome by excitement."
They were soon reminded, as bullets began flying from Israeli snipers and tanks, killing people in the crowd. Under orders from the military not to stop, Mazen tried to keep driving.
He is one of dozens of Palestinian truck drivers who through nearly two years of war has regularly made the perilous journey to and from border crossings to transport cargo sent by aid agencies, the primary way food, shelter and medical supplies have entered the enclave of 2.1mn people.
Mazen and other drivers, for whom the Financial Times has used pseudonyms to protect their identities, have witnessed first-hand how Israeli bombing and blockades have pushed Gaza into a humanitarian catastrophe, displacing most of the population, killing tens of thousands and triggering a famine.
Each trip, which can take days despite being a couple of dozen kilometres, is riddled with danger, according to drivers, transport executives, traders and aid officials.
Drivers enter a crucible of Israeli attacks, starving crowds and organised crime groups. More than 2,100 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid since late May, mostly by Israeli fire, according to the UN.
Other obstacles are bureaucratic: waiting for Israeli permission to move from one point to the next can take hours, days or never come at all. This limits the number of convoys the UN can run, leaving supplies stuck at the crossing, according to humanitarian officials.
Israel has accused the UN of not collecting the cargo, arguing that a new model -- the US-funded Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, where food is brought in separately and distributed in militarised sites -- would be better.
Israel says GHF is designed to prevent aid theft by Hamas, but UN officials say they have not seen evidence of large-scale diversion by the militant group.
At dawn on the days of a mission, Mazen -- who was a commercial trucker for more than a decade before the war started following Hamas's October 7 2023 attack on Israel -- sets off from his tent on the crowded Mawasi coastal strip in southern Gaza to a rendezvous with his convoy.
Once they get approval from the Israeli army, the convoys -- which can be more than 50 trucks -- drive towards the Kerem Shalom crossing on routes set by the military, often halted for hours at Israeli holding points.
When they finally arrive, they must wait as cargo from Israeli trucks is inspected, then loaded on to Palestinian vehicles.
Sometimes, night falls before Israel clears them to leave. Stuck at the crossing, Mazen boils tea on a small fire with other drivers, then lies underneath his truck, hoping the desert breeze will lull him to sleep.
To get such missions approved, aid agencies must submit a detailed request to the Israeli military, which often rejected them, said Olga Cherevko of the UN's humanitarian affairs office in Gaza.
Some 120 humanitarian aid trucks entered per day in August, according to the UN, compared with about 600 during the shortlived truce between January and March.
Israel now allows only a few NGOs and UN agencies to deliver supplies for pick-up at the crossing, with the UN saying nearly a third of approvals have taken over a month and deliveries restricted to two crossings, Kerem Shalom in the south and Zikim in the north.
Those agencies contract trucking companies inside Gaza which hire drivers such as Mazen.
Cherevko said the whole trip, including loading the cargo, should take five hours but instead usually lasted from 12 to more than 24.
"During the ceasefire, we were able to run multiple convoys a day," she said. "This is absolutely not even possible in any way right now."
Cogat, the Israeli military body responsible for humanitarian affairs in Gaza, said Israel neither prevented aid entering Gaza nor limited the number of aid trucks, saying some 300 went in every day.
It said it co-ordinated truck movements "to ensure the security of the convoys" and had a "transparent and clear" registration process designed to prevent Hamas from controlling aid. It accused some international organisations of failing to provide the required information for clearance.
The crowds of starving people often start emerging when the trucks pass the once busy Rafah province, a deserted wasteland that Israel has emptied of its population.
Omar, another driver, said the crowds began appearing in May after the easing of a nearly three-month Israeli blockade of the enclave. It was not theft, but "self-distribution" by people "who for months hadn't had enough food", he added.
The expression on their faces was the same as "the happiness in the eyes of my children" after he brought back a sack of flour from a mission, said Omar, a wholesale merchant who turned to driving his commercial truck for aid deliveries during the war.
Attacks by Israeli forces on those hungry crowds were common, drivers said, with 1,011 Palestinians killed while seeking aid along convoy routes between late May and early September, according to the UN.
The UN said 1,135 people had been killed near GHF sites over the same period.
The IDF said the attacks were under review, adding that the military had installed fences and signs on the routes leading to GHF sites in order to minimise "friction" between Gazans and IDF forces.
Armed thieves also ambush convoys. Drivers said these robbers have shot at their tyres, siphoned petrol from the trucks and taken their batteries.
Some thieves steal entire trucks. Multiple transporters said their vehicles had recently been seized by an armed criminal gang they identified as that of Yasser Abu Shabab.
Abu Shabab, whose gang is notorious among Palestinians and officials for looting aid, claims to have established control over a portion of Rafah near the crossing in the Israeli militarised zone. Israeli officials have previously said they are arming Gazan clans opposed to Hamas.
While waiting at an Israeli checkpoint with a WFP convoy in July, Omar said three jeeps pulled up and a man he identified as Abu Shabab told him to get out of his truck.
"He asked me, 'what type of truck is it, automatic or normal?' I told him automatic, and he told me to start the truck," Omar recalled. "I put in the code and turned on the car, then one of his drivers got in, and drove the truck away." Abu Shabab did not respond to a request for comment.
Less than one-fifth of trucks reached their destination in Gaza this summer, the rest intercepted either peacefully by starving crowds or forcefully by armed actors, according to the UN. Aid officials say most interceptions are now by hungry people.
Faced with these dangers, only a fraction of Gaza's drivers remain in business, a transport industry association official said.
Dozens have been killed and wounded by Israeli fire or armed robbers, with many others detained by Israel or unwilling to take the risks, according to the association.
Just over a third of the more than 1,200 trucks once working in Gaza are operational, according to the transport official.
"The rest were burned, they were destroyed, or we took their tyres, stripped them to fix other trucks," he said.
With no new materials allowed in by Israel, scarcity has driven prices for spare parts to astronomical levels, drivers and transport executives said. The price of a tyre has risen from about $300 to $5,000, according to the industry official -- if one can be found at all.
By the time Mazen's battered convoy arrives back in central Gaza, there is often almost no cargo left. With each mission, the task seems to grow harder, he said. "The crowds are getting bigger, the problems on the road are worsening, there are more robbers and shooting."