Gaza War in Maps After 24 Months of Fighting

Two years of fighting have devastated Gaza.

The Israeli bombing campaign and military incursion have resulted in over 67,000 Palestinian fatalities according to the Hamas-run health ministry, nearly the whole populace has been forced to move, and the UN states the majority of residences have been destroyed or severely damaged.

The offensive was launched after Hamas's unprecedented assault across the border on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

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

A ceasefire proposal has been proposed by American President Donald Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that would end the fighting immediately. Hamas has agreed to free all remaining hostages - alive and dead - and to transfer control of Gaza to independent Palestinian experts, but it has refused to agree to laying down arms or to relinquishing any political involvement in the leadership of Gaza.

Gaza is merely 41km in length and 10km in width - roughly one-fourth the area of London - surrounded 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

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

A UN investigative commission says Israel has committed 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 turned into uninhabitable.

Expansion of Damage

The Israeli operation initially focused on northern Gaza - where it said militants were hiding among the non-combatant residents. Hamas denied this.

The northern town of Beit Hanoun, a mere 2km from the frontier, was one of the first areas struck by airstrikes. It experienced heavy damage.

Israel continued to bomb Gaza City and additional cities in the north and instructed residents to move south of the Wadi Gaza river before it initiated its land offensive at the conclusion of October 2023.

But Israel was also launching air strikes 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.

Israeli forces escalated its bombing of the southern and central regions at the start of December, before initiating a land assault on Khan Younis, and by the start of 2024 more than half of Gaza's buildings had been destroyed or damaged.

By the time a truce was announced 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 fatally wounded, as per Gaza's health ministry.

And the devastation has persisted since Israel ended the ceasefire in the month of March - including in Rafah in the south. The UN calculates more than 90% of the residential buildings in Gaza have been damaged during the war.

Humanitarian Catastrophe

During the conflict, the militant group - which is designated as a terrorist organisation by multiple nations including Israel and the UK - and additional factions affiliated with it have been engaged in fierce combat against Israeli forces on the ground. They have also launched numerous projectiles into Israel, particularly during the initial phase of the war.

However, within Gaza, whole neighborhoods have been razed to the ground, hospitals and mosques have been destroyed and agricultural land where greenhouses once stood have been turned into sand and rubble by heavy vehicles and tanks used for destruction by Israeli troops.

Israeli authorities state Hamas uses non-military structures such as hospitals for armed operations - but the group denies these claims.

Prior to the conflict, the majority of Gaza’s population lived in its four main cities - Rafah and Khan Younis in the south, Deir al-Balah city, in the centre, and Gaza City.

Within 10 days of October 7, 2023, the Israeli military campaign had forced nearly half to abandon their residences, as per the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

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

Families have moved multiple times as Israel changed the emphasis of their campaign, first instructing people in the north to move south of the Wadi Gaza waterway, which cuts the Strip roughly in half, and subsequently directing people to evacuate a number of "evacuation zones" in the south.

Airdropped leaflets by the Israeli army alerted residents to leave ahead of operations in the area. However, not every Israeli attack are preceded by warnings.

Restricted Areas Grow

Since Israel ended the ceasefire, it has designated more and more areas of Gaza as prohibited areas - where limitations are enforced - or making them subject to displacement orders, 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.

Aid agencies have to coordinate with the Israeli authorities to operate in the "no-go" areas.

Israel had also blocked any relief supplies from entering the territory at the beginning of March - alleging that Hamas was diverting it. Limited aid is now allowed in, although relief groups still say it is nowhere near enough.

By the beginning of April every bakery supported by the UN in Gaza had been closed, the majority of fresh produce were in extremely short supply and medical facilities were rationing medications and antibiotics.

The humanitarian organization ActionAid cautioned that a "new cycle of starvation and thirst" was imminent.

Israel’s defence minister declared on 16 April that Israel would set up protected areas in Gaza to provide a “buffer” to safeguard Israeli towns following the conclusion of hostilities - the group has demanded that Israeli troops must pull out from Gaza under any permanent ceasefire.

At the time nearly 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 May, Israel launched a ground offensive named Operation Gideon's Chariots, which the Prime Minister stated would aim to secure the release of the 48 captives still held - 20 of whom are believed to be living - and "finish the destruction" of the Palestinian armed group.

From that point onward the areas covered by evacuation directives and limitations have been extended to cover 82% of Gaza, according to the UN.

The first phase of the campaign focused on objectives within northern Gaza, Khan Younis, and Rafah but in August Israel revealed intentions to seize and control 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 people residing there.

Those who remained there were ordered to move south to al-Mawasi in the south west of the Strip which Israel has designated as a “humanitarian area” - even though it has persisted in conducting deadly strikes there and which the UN said was already overpopulated and dangerous.

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

But many more thousands continue to stay in severe living conditions, with health and other essential services collapsing.

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In September 2025, multiple nations, {including