New satellite imagery lays bare the sheer scale of the destruction in the Gaza Strip with two years of Israeli bombardment having turned much of the landscape into a wasteland.
The images, sourced from the San Francisco-based imaging company Planet Labs PBC, show the Palestinian enclave from when the Israel-Hamas war began after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel and from last month.
An estimated 80% of Gaza’s structures have been damaged or destroyed in that time, according to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
Gaza City, where Israel launched its most recent offensive, has been turned into a colorless wasteland. Sports fields, parks and a reservoir have been all but wiped out.
The international community has called on Israel to immediately halt its ground assault on the famine-stricken area, which has forced hundreds of thousands to flee.
Al-Mawasi, once a green patch of land north of Rafah, has expanded into a crowded tent city housing hundreds of thousands of refugees in ever-shrinking spaces, but lacking basic infrastructure such as shelter, water and sewage systems.
The farmlands that once dotted the landscape before the war began have been almost completely replaced by large, densely populated encampments in this designated “safe zone” that has frequently come under fire during the war.
Rafah’s population has swelled to an estimated 1.4 million people during the war, over half of Gaza’s population. It has become virtually uninhabitable with its buildings crumbled and blackened. Mounds of concrete and bent metal remain.
The images show thousands of homes turned to stony wreckage, green fields turned to dust, the veins of the city’s old roadways still visible.
Israel launched its offensive in Gaza after the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks two years ago, when 1,200 people were killed and around 250 were taken hostage, marking a major escalation in a decadeslong conflict.
In the two years of the Israeli military campaign since, Palestinian health officials say, more than 67,000 people have been killed in Gaza, including thousands of children.