Over the last couple of years, Palestinians across the Gaza Strip have faced unrelenting bombardment, mass hunger and recurring displacement as Israeli fighting continues in the territory.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians and seriously injured nearly 170,000, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The offensive followed the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed nearly 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
While negotiations to begin implementing efforts to halt the fighting under U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan appeared to advance quickly in recent days, bombing continued in Gaza over the weekend, just days before the two-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks.
These maps and charts illustrate the extent of destruction, Israeli control of the territory and the death toll after 731 days of war.
Destruction
As of Oct. 2, roughly 60 per cent of buildings in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed or damaged since Oct. 12, 2023, according to an analysis of satellite imagery by researchers at Oregon State University.
The figure marks a significant increase from nearly 13 per cent in November 2023, a month after Israel launched its offensive in Gaza.
The hardest-hit area continues to be Gaza City and the surrounding Gaza governorate, where roughly 74 per cent of buildings have been scarred or destroyed in the war, with hundreds more estimated to have been targeted and demolished in the past month, in Israel’s latest offensive in Gaza City.
In comparison, the UN estimates roughly 78 per cent of all structures in the Gaza Strip were destroyed or damaged as of July 8.
United Nations Secretary General António Guterres described Israel’s latest actions in Gaza City as “systematic destruction.”
Displacement
Much of Gaza City was already laid to waste in the weeks following Oct. 7, 2023, but around one million Palestinians returned there to homes among the ruins during a temporary ceasefire from Jan. 19 to March 1.
Around 400,000 Palestinians were forced to flee Gaza City last month, since Israel launched a major offensive and ordering a mass evacuation. Hundreds of thousands remained, saying they have nowhere to go and no means to flee.
“Whether people are staying in Gaza City because they have nowhere else to go, lack the means to flee amidst a dire shortage of fuel and shelter as a result of Israel’s unlawful blockade, or cannot bear yet another humiliating displacement and its consequences, Israel cannot be allowed to deny civilians in Gaza City the protection they are entitled to,” said Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty International’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns, in a statement on Friday.
The waves of displacement logged by the UN have escalated since early September, when the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) began an operation targeting high-rise buildings.
Among those forced to flee Gaza City in September is Murad Banat, 50, who says both of his homes and his shop were destroyed in Israeli military operations before he fled to Deir al-Balah.
“Last month, they collapsed [my] three-storey [home],” Banat told CBC News freelance videographer Mohamed El Saife. “We have no more furniture or home or shelter or work. We’re back to rebuilding our life from the very beginning, if God plans for us to live.”
Banat said, “What keeps us patient is everyone else is going through something similar. Some lost more than us, some lost less … we just thank God that our [own] children were not martyred.”
Islam Atallah, 32, was among hundreds of thousands displaced from Gaza City after his house in the Hayy al-Nasr neighbourhood was surrounded by Israeli military and confronted with airstrikes and quadcopters — drones equipped with guns.
Atallah said it took nearly two days to make the journey on foot to Deir al-Balah with his wife and two children, as he pushed a cart with their belongings.
“It’s difficult to live in a house, then suddenly be in a tent … there is no good life here,” he said.
UN experts have said the IDF’s “targeted destruction” of Gaza’s health-care system amounts to “medicide.” The UN has accused Israel of deliberately attacking and starving health-care workers, paramedics and hospitals in order to wipe out medical care in the besieged enclave.
Only 14 out of 36 hospitals in Gaza are functioning, and only partially, as of Oct. 1, according to the UN. Eight of the 14 hospitals are in Gaza City, which forms “the backbone” of the territory’s health system, as nearly half of all hospitals and field hospitals are based there.
Israel’s bombardment campaign has also produced a volume of debris that’s estimated to be 14 times greater than the combined total from all conflicts over the past 16 years, according to a July 2024 assessment by the UN.
The total debris generated is approximately 41,946,018 metric tonnes, marking an 83 per cent rise from 22,930,000 tonnes in January 2024 to July 2025.
As of October, the vast majority of the Gaza Strip remains under Israeli military control.
Deaths
According to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), as of July 15, nearly half of the 67,160 Palestinians killed since the war broke out in Gaza — or 46 per cent — were women and children.
Last month, the UN Commission cited the scale of the killings as one of the acts backing up its finding that Israel has committed genocide in the territory.
A number of experts and organizations, including the UN, have said the number of deaths is likely undercounted. A peer-reviewed study published in The Lancet in January suggested the number of people killed in the first nine months of the conflict could be 40 per cent higher than reported.
According to a joint investigation by the U.K.’s Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call into a classified Israeli military intelligence database, as of May 2025, some 8,900 named fighters were listed from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad as dead or “probably dead.”
That figure accounted for just 17 per cent of total deaths, with the remaining 83 per cent of the dead thought to be civilians.
Experts have said that the 83 per cent figure for civilian deaths is likely to be an undercount, as it uses the IDF’s own definition of militants. Israel has previously named journalists or political members of Hamas as targets, but international law prohibits the targeting of anyone not engaged in combat.
Hunger
Deaths in Gaza have continued to mount in 2025, but several other factors outside of Israeli attacks became evident in the causes of death.
Hunger and malnutrition-related deaths began to climb after Palestinians were subject to extreme food shortages and famine-like conditions following an 11-week complete blockade on all humanitarian aid between March and May.
In August, an analysis by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) found more than half a million people in Gaza were trapped in famine, marked by widespread starvation, destitution and preventable death.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, 460 Palestinians have died of malnutrition or starvation, including 154 children, it said in a report on Sunday.
Of those, 181 deaths were logged since the IPC’s report published on Aug. 22.
Hundreds of Palestinians have also been killed since May trying to access aid hubs run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private Israeli- and U.S.-backed outfit created following the complete aid blockade.
Human rights groups have accused Israel of routinely opening fire on civilians attempting to access aid at or near these sites. GHF has previously said its armed contractors had not used lethal force. Israel’s army said it takes precautions to mitigate harm to civilians.
In a report on Monday, Gaza’s Health Ministry says 2,610 people have been killed in attempting to reach humanitarian aid since October 2023.
