Destruction in Gaza caused by Israel-Hamas war mapped using satellite data

Israeli military operations in Gaza have killed almost 42,000 people since Oct. 7, 2023, according to the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory, the majority of them women and children. 

In addition to lives lost, the United Nations estimates that the war has displaced 90% of Gaza’s roughly 2.3 million people. Many of them — unable to leave the embattled enclave — have been displaced multiple times within Gaza as they try to escape the Israeli airstrikes that have decimated its towns and cities.

As of January, the war had caused around $18.5 billion in damage to infrastructure in Gaza, according to the U.N. and the World Bank. That figure is almost equal to the entire combined GDP of the Palestinian territories (Gaza and the much larger Israeli-occupied West Bank) in the year before Hamas sparked the ongoing war with its Oct. 7 terrorist attack. 

Most of the damage and destruction has been to housing (72% as of January), but other, critical infrastructure has also been affected. The U.N. and World Bank said 84% of health facilities and 92% of primary roads had been damaged or totally destroyed by January, and the bombing has continued since then.

How to assess destruction in Gaza

It has not been possible to comprehensively map destruction in Gaza from the ground. International journalists have not been allowed inside Gaza, apart from on highly restricted tours offered by the Israeli military, since the war started. 

Palestinian journalists covering the conflict have had minimal security and been subjected to evacuation orders and restrictions on their movements like everyone else in the enclave. At least 116 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since the war started, according to The Committee to Protect Journalists.

Given the difficulties of on-the-ground assessment, a team of researchers based in the U.S. have used data and other resources from the European Space Agency and NASA to map indicators of damage in conflict zones, including Gaza.

“The satellite data, specifically, is not a picture like you would think from a normal camera,” Corey Scher, at the City University of New York, explained to CBS News. “This is radar, so it shoots a burst of radar into the Earth that echoes back to the sensor, and we can get an idea of this three dimensional structure and arrangement of an area in a way that you don’t get with an optical image.”

The technique allows the team to track indicators of destruction more quickly than is possible by analyzing traditional satellite imagery, which can take many weeks, Scher said.

Mapping the situation on the ground

CBS News has used data provided by Scher and Jamon Van Den Hoek, an Associate Professor of Geography at Oregon State University who’s also worked on the project, to map the indicators of destruction in Gaza over the course of the war in an effort to reveal the overall extent of the damage to infrastructure.

Scroll through the map below to see how the damage escalated over the course of the last 12 months.

“Over time, it becomes inevitable that people are displaced to areas where there are just – there is no safety, there is no shelter that can support… the population. The food insecurity, lack of access to water, just the constant uprooting on top of the background of damage is also extremely unique in this conflict,” Van Den Hoek said.

“The pace of the bombing, the breadth of the bombing, that resulted in this damage was extremely unique,” said Van Den Hoek, adding that it was the most destruction he had seen in any of the conflicts he’s looked at in his work with Oregon State’s Conflict Ecology lab.

“Over time, it becomes inevitable that people are displaced to areas where there are just – there is no safety, there is no shelter that can support… the population. The food insecurity, lack of access to water, just the constant uprooting on top of the background of damage is also extremely unique in this conflict,” said Van Den Hoek.

“It’s beyond the brick and stone”

“The damage has been colossal and also unprecedented and unheard of in the history of the U.N.,” Juliette Touma, communications director for UNWRA, the U.N. agency that supports Palestinian refugees, told CBS News.

Touma said that of the 190 buildings UNRWA had in Gaza before the war, two thirds had been either damaged or totally destroyed, with several being hit multiple times.

“It’s beyond the brick and stone,” Touma said. “It’s about what these buildings and structures used to represent — and the vast majority of these buildings were schools for children.”

Before Oct. 7, 2023, UNWRA provided education services for about 300,000 children across Gaza. By September 2024, Touma said all the school buildings still standing were being used as shelters for displaced people.

In January 2024, Israel accused 12 UNWRA employees of participating in the Oct. 7 attacks. After an internal U.N. investigation, the global body fired nine of its staffers, accepting that they may have taken part in the attacks. The agency employs some 13,000 people in Gaza and, as of September 2024, the U.N. said at least 222 of its team members had been killed in the war.

“What is the fate of these children who used to go to these buildings that are now either destroyed or severely damaged, or they continue to house people and continue to provide shelter for displaced families?” Touma said. “Even if there is a miracle and we have a cease-fire tomorrow, what will this mean for education? And how will children be able to go back to school? Because… 70% of our schools in Gaza cannot be used.”

The destruction and successive Israeli evacuation orders have forced many people to flee to increasingly difficult places to survive, including hundreds of thousands crammed into the coastal area of al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis. Israel’s military has designated al-Mawasi a humanitarian zone, but before the war, it had “no facilities for human beings,” Touma said.

“People just started setting up shop there, meaning putting these plastic sheeting with, you know, wooden boards and living anywhere and everywhere,” she told CBS News. “At some point, Mawasi had a million people.”

But even al-Mawasi has been bombed. The most deadly attack was in July, when 90 people were killed and 300 wounded. Israel said it targeted and killed Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’ military wing, with the strike.

“A damaged building is a proxy for a displaced family, a displaced group of, you know, a school or a bakery,” Scher said. “It’s also an indicator of a potential hazard for an unexploded ordnance… It’s a proxy for everything that’s happening on the ground.”