🔗 Share this article

24 months of conflict have devastated Gaza.

Israel’s bombing campaign and military incursion have killed more than 67,000 Palestinians as reported by the Hamas-controlled health authority, nearly the entire population has been displaced, and the UN says most homes have been damaged or destroyed.

The military operation was launched after Hamas’ unprecedented assault across the border on 7 October 2023, in which approximately 1,200 individuals were slain and 251 others were captured.

Israel says it is attempting to dismantle the military and governing capabilities of the Islamist group, which is dedicated to the elimination of Israel and has been governing Gaza since 2007.

A ceasefire proposal has been put forward by American President Donald Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that would end the fighting immediately. The group has consented to free all remaining hostages - living and deceased - and to hand over control of Gaza to Palestinian technocrats, but it has refused to agree to disarmament or to relinquishing any future political role in Gaza’s leadership.

Gaza is merely 41km in length and 10km in width - about a quarter of the size of London - surrounded on three sides by closed borders with Israel and Egypt and by the Mediterranean coast to the west, where a naval blockade is enforced by Israel. It is inhabited by over two million residents.

Scale of Destruction

Over nine out of ten residences are estimated to be destroyed or damaged; the medical, water, and sanitation infrastructure have broken down; and experts supported by the UN say there is famine in Gaza City.

A United Nations commission of inquiry says Israeli forces have perpetrated acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza - even though Israel has rejected the commission’s report, labeling it as "inaccurate and misleading".

This visual guide shows how Gaza has become in large parts uninhabitable.

Expansion of Damage

The Israeli operation initially focused on northern Gaza - where it said Hamas fighters were concealed within the civilian population. Hamas denied this.

The town in the north of Beit Hanoun, only 2km (1.2 miles) from the border, was one of the first areas struck by airstrikes. It sustained heavy damage.

Ongoing Israeli airstrikes targeted Gaza City and other urban centres in the north and instructed residents to move south of the Wadi Gaza river before it launched its ground invasion at the conclusion of October 2023.

But Israel was also launching aerial bombardments on the urban areas in the south which hundreds of thousands of Gazans from the north were fleeing towards. By the close of November, parts of the south of the territory lay in ruins, as did a large portion of the north.

Israel intensified its bombing of southern and central Gaza at the start of December, before initiating a land assault on Khan Younis, and by January 2024 more than half of structures in Gaza had been damaged or destroyed.

By the time a ceasefire was declared in January 2025 an estimated 60% of buildings across the Gaza Strip had been harmed, with Gaza City experiencing the most severe damage. Over 46,000 Palestinians had been killed, as per Gaza's health ministry.

And the destruction has continued since the truce was terminated by Israel in March - including in Rafah in the south. The UN estimates over 90% of the residential buildings in Gaza have been damaged during the war.

Humanitarian Catastrophe

Throughout the war, Hamas - which is designated as a terror group by Israel, the UK and many other countries - and additional factions allied to it have been involved in intense battles against Israeli forces on the ground. They have also fired thousands of rockets into Israel, particularly during the initial phase of the war.

But in Gaza, entire districts have been razed to the ground, hospitals and mosques have been obliterated and agricultural land where greenhouses once stood have been reduced to debris and dust by heavy vehicles and tanks used for demolitions by Israeli soldiers.

Israeli authorities state militants utilize non-military structures such as medical centers for military purposes - but Hamas denies that.

Prior to the conflict, most of Gaza's 2.1 million people lived in its four main cities - Rafah and Khan Younis in the south, Deir al-Balah, in the centre, and the city of Gaza.

In just 10 days of October 7, 2023, the Israeli military campaign had forced nearly half to leave their homes, according to the UN's Palestinian refugee agency.

And by the time the truce was implemented 15 months later, an estimated 1.9m people had been internally displaced - they remain unable to return home.

Families have moved multiple times as Israeli forces shifted the focus of its operation, initially telling people in the north to move south of Wadi Gaza river, which cuts the Strip roughly in half, and later ordering people to evacuate a series of "evacuation zones" in the south.

Airdropped leaflets by the Israeli army warned people to evacuate before military actions in the region. However, not every Israeli attack are preceded by warnings.

Restricted Areas Grow

After the truce was terminated, it has designated an increasing number of regions of Gaza as prohibited areas - where limitations are enforced - or imposing evacuation directives, meaning Gazans have been told to evacuate entirely.

At first the orders to evacuate covered two areas - in the North Gaza and Khan Younis governorates - with a “no-go” area in place along the whole border.

Humanitarian organizations have to co-ordinate with the Israeli government to work within the "no-go" areas.

Israeli forces had also prevented any relief supplies from entering the territory at the start of March - accusing Hamas of commandeering it. Restricted assistance is now allowed in, although aid agencies still say it is nowhere near enough.

By the start of April all the UN-supported bakeries in Gaza had been shut down, most fresh vegetables were in extremely short supply and hospitals were rationing painkillers and antibiotics.

The NGO ActionAid cautioned that a "new cycle of starvation and thirst" loomed.

Israel’s defence minister announced on April 16 that Israel would set up security zones in Gaza to provide a “buffer” to safeguard Israeli towns even after the war ended - the group has demanded that Israeli forces must withdraw from Gaza under any lasting truce.

At the time almost 70% of Gaza was affected by limitations imposed by Israel - including the majority of North Gaza and Gaza City governorates in the north and the whole of the Rafah governorate in the south, as reported by the UN.

And in the month of May, Israel launched a ground offensive named Operation Gideon's Chariots, which Netanyahu said would seek to secure the release of the 48 captives still held - 20 of whom are thought to be alive - and "complete the defeat" of the Palestinian armed group.

Since then the regions affected by evacuation directives and limitations have been extended to cover 82% of Gaza, according to the UN.

The initial stage of the campaign concentrated on targets in Rafah, Khan Younis and northern Gaza but in August Israel announced plans to seize and control the entire city of Gaza itself - which it has called the “last stronghold” of Hamas.

The city had been the most crowded part of the territory before the war, with 775,000 residents residing there.

Individuals who stayed behind were ordered to move south to al-Mawasi in the south west of the Strip which Israel has classified as a “humanitarian area” - despite the fact that it has continued to carry out deadly strikes there and which the UN said was already overcrowded and dangerous.

Hundreds of thousands of residents have so far fled the city of Gaza, where a famine was confirmed in August 2025 by a UN-backed body.

But many more thousands continue to stay in severe living conditions, with medical and vital services collapsing.

International Response

In September 2025, multiple nations, {including