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24 months of fighting have ravaged Gaza.

Israel’s bombing campaign and military incursion have killed more than 67,000 Palestinians according to the Hamas-controlled health authority, nearly the entire population has been forced to move, and the UN says the majority of residences have been destroyed or severely damaged.

The military operation came in response to Hamas's unprecedented assault across the border on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 more were captured.

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

A peace plan has been put forward by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that would halt hostilities at once. Hamas has agreed to free all remaining hostages - alive and dead - and to transfer Gaza’s governance to independent Palestinian experts, but it has not committed to disarmament or to giving up any political involvement in the leadership of Gaza.

Gaza is only 41km (25 miles) long and 10km wide - about a quarter of the size of London - bordered on three sides by closed borders with Israel and Egypt and by the Mediterranean Sea to the west, where Israel imposes a blockade. It is inhabited by over two million residents.

Scale of Destruction

More than 90% of homes are believed to be destroyed or damaged; the medical, water, and sanitation infrastructure have broken down; and UN-backed experts say there is starvation 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 findings of the commission, labeling it as "distorted and false".

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

How the Destruction Spread

The Israeli operation first targeted northern Gaza - where it said Hamas fighters were concealed within the non-combatant residents. Hamas denied this.

The northern town of Beit Hanoun, a mere 2km from the border, was one of the first areas struck by airstrikes. It experienced severe destruction.

Ongoing Israeli airstrikes targeted Gaza City and additional cities in the north and instructed residents to relocate southward of the Wadi Gaza river before it launched its ground invasion at the end 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 escaping to. By the end of November, parts of the south of the territory lay in ruins, as did a large portion of the north.

Israel intensified its airstrikes on the southern and central regions at the beginning of December, before initiating a land assault on Khan Younis, and by January 2024 more than half of Gaza's buildings had been damaged or destroyed.

By the time a ceasefire was declared in early 2025 an approximately 60% of buildings across the Gaza Strip had been damaged, with Gaza City experiencing the most severe damage. Over 46,000 Palestinians had been fatally wounded, according to the Gaza health authority.

And the destruction has continued since the truce was terminated by Israel in March - including in Rafah in the south. The UN estimates more than 90% of the housing units in Gaza have been affected during the war.

Humanitarian Crisis

During the conflict, the militant group - which is classified as a terror group by multiple nations including Israel and the UK - and additional factions allied to it have been engaged in fierce combat against Israeli forces on the ground. They have also fired thousands of rockets into Israel, especially in the first months of the war.

But in Gaza, entire districts have been razed to the ground, hospitals and mosques have been destroyed and farmland where greenhouses once stood have been turned into debris and dust by heavy vehicles and tanks used for demolitions by Israeli troops.

Israel says militants utilize non-military structures such as hospitals for military purposes - but the group denies these claims.

Before the war, the majority of Gaza’s population lived in its primary urban centers - Khan Younis and Rafah in the south, Deir al-Balah, in the centre, and the city of Gaza.

Within 10 days of 7 October 2023, Israel’s offensive had forced nearly half to abandon their residences, as per the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

And by the time the ceasefire was declared after 15 months, an estimated 1.9m people had been internally displaced - they continue to be unable to go back.

Families have moved multiple times as Israel changed the focus of its operation, first instructing people in the north to relocate southward of the Wadi Gaza waterway, which cuts the Strip roughly in half, and subsequently directing people to leave a series of "evacuation zones" in the south.

Airdropped leaflets by the Israeli military warned people to leave ahead of operations in the area. However, not every Israeli attack are preceded by alerts.

Expansion of Restricted Zones

After the truce was terminated, it has designated more and more areas of Gaza as prohibited areas - where limitations are enforced - or imposing evacuation directives, meaning residents have been instructed to leave completely.

Initially 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 coordinate with the Israeli authorities 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 diverting it. Limited aid is now permitted to enter, although aid agencies still say it is insufficient.

By the beginning of April every bakery supported by the UN in Gaza had been closed, most fresh vegetables were in very limited supply and medical facilities were limiting distribution of painkillers and antibiotics.

The humanitarian organization ActionAid cautioned that a "renewed period of hunger and dehydration" loomed.

The Israeli Defense Minister announced on 16 April that Israel would set up protected areas in Gaza to create a protective barrier to safeguard Israeli towns even after the war ended - the group has demanded that Israeli forces must withdraw from Gaza under any permanent ceasefire.

At the time almost 70% of Gaza was impacted by Israeli restrictions - encompassing most of the North Gaza and Gaza City governorates in the north and the entire Rafah governorate in the south, as reported by the UN.

And in the month of May, Israel launched a land operation named Operation Gideon's Chariots, which Netanyahu said would aim to obtain the freedom of the 48 remaining hostages - 20 of whom are believed to be living - and "complete the defeat" of the militant organization.

From that point onward 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 focused on objectives within northern Gaza, Khan Younis, and Rafah but in the month of August Israel revealed intentions to capture and occupy all of Gaza City itself - which it has referred to as the “last stronghold” of Hamas.

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

Individuals who stayed behind were instructed to relocate 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 lethal attacks there and which the UN said was already overpopulated and unsafe.

Numerous residents have so far fled the city of Gaza, where a famine was confirmed in August 2025 by a UN-supported agency.

But hundreds of thousands more remain there in dire humanitarian conditions, with medical and vital services failing.

International Response

In September 2025, multiple nations, {including