Visual analysis: the wastelands in Gaza’s two biggest cities

Over 76 days of war with Hamas, Israel’s military has carried out one of the largest bombing campaigns in history on the small, blockaded enclave.

Foreign journalists have been denied access to Gaza, making satellite images and radar data the only reliable method of assessing the extent of the damage.

The Financial Times has combined data from commercial satellites with damage assessments from researchers at the CUNY Graduate Center and Oregon State University. The resulting images vividly show how Israel’s incursion has left northern Gaza virtually uninhabitable.

Israeli troops are now fighting Hamas in Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza, and the damage is already starting to resemble its campaign in the north, which has turned most of what was Gaza’s population centre into a wasteland.

Nearly 20,000 Gazans have been killed already, according to Palestinian officials in the enclave, after 1,200 people were killed in Israel in a cross-border raid by Hamas on October 7, according to Israeli figures. Israel has said 137 soldiers have died and estimates it has killed several thousand Hamas fighters, a figure that cannot be verified independently.

Gaza City

Gaza City was the initial focus of Israel’s invasion. Even before IDF troops entered the northern city, which Israel has described as the heart of Hamas’s political and military machinery, a sustained bombing campaign had destroyed wide swaths of the once-thriving commercial centre.

An aerial view of Gaza City in the north captured by satellite on December 15 . . . 

. . . when overlaid with latest damage estimates it appears that up to 75 per cent of buildings across Gaza City have been affected since October, with the percentage rising in the city centre

To gain operational control of the city, Israeli troops encircled it from the south, then homed in on individual locations such as al-Shifa hospital, the relatively upmarket neighbourhood of Rimal, and al-Shati and Jabalia refugee camps.

Infantry movements were preceded by rolling barrages of so-called dumb bombs, each between 1,000lbs and 2,000lbs, which destroyed city blocks. This was followed by close-quarters combat, with soldiers calling in air strikes on targets ahead of them.

As much as three-quarters of Gaza City has been destroyed, with the deepest damage appearing to be in the refugee camps and the city centre as well as around al-Shifa and the port of Gaza.

As fighting continues in Shuja’iyya, the city’s main streets are now under the control of the Israeli forces, with Israel Defense Forces videos, social media images and Palestinian journalists showing a battered landscape emptied of residents.

Much of the population has fled south after being ordered to evacuate the north by the IDF, with an estimated 1.8mn people now displaced near the border with Egypt.

Khan Younis

After gaining control of Gaza City, the Israeli military sent tanks in from near Shuja’iyya, which headed south towards Khan Younis. The second-largest city in the enclave has been pounded by Israel’s air force in recent days.

The southern city of Khan Younis, also captured by satellite on December 15, has suffered less overall damage than its northern neighbour . . . 

. . . but more than 25 per cent of its buildings have been affected so far — and the figure is rising rapidly

The population of Khan Younis, with its crowded warrens and narrow streets, had initially swelled with displaced Palestinians, who were then warned to head further south.

The IDF has described the fighting in Khan Younis as the most severe it has encountered so far. Earlier this week it sent in another brigade, made up of a few thousands troops, to support its advance on the city in which senior Hamas leaders grew up.

“We are intensifying the operation in Khan Younis and deepening it,” Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said when the brigade was deployed on Tuesday.

Israel’s allies, including the US, UK and Germany, are pushing for the IDF to take a more targeted approach, with small teams of special forces carrying out raids in the south, rather than widescale bombing campaigns.

It is unclear when — and if — Israel will lower the intensity of its combat operation. Defence minister Yoav Gallant declined to provide a timeline for that shift during a recent meeting with US defence secretary Lloyd Austin.

He indicated that as Israeli forces take control of more of the strip, some civilians may be allowed back to their homes. But, as the satellite and radar data show, few homes remain for them to return to.