The ruin of Gaza: how Israel’s two-year assault has devastated the territory- IDF’s bombs and ground offensive have killed tens of thousands of people and reduced entire cities to rubble

Students doing their homework amid the rubble of buildings in Khan Younis in September 2024. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

 https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/oct/07/the-ruin-of-gaza-how-israel-two-year-assault-has-devastated-the-territory

Jason Burke. Graphics by Paul Scruton and Heidi Wilson

Tue 7 Oct 2025 06.35 EDT

The devastating war in Gaza has entered its third year, standing as Israel’s longest war since the 1948 conflict that led to the country’s creation.

The majority of those killed by Israel’s offensive in the strip have been civilians, and the overall total now exceeds 67,000. Entire families have been wiped out in a single airstrike. Sometimes, only a single individual, frequently a child, is left alive. There are also nearly 170,000 injured. In all, casualties amount to roughly 10% of Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.3 million.

There may well be many more dead uncounted in the rubble that now covers much of Gaza. Those killed by untreated illnesses, poor nutrition, suicide or other causes linked to the conflict are more numerous still. Thousands of people have simply disappeared – lost, incinerated or blown apart by explosions, or held in secret detention by Israel.

Israel has controlled and restricted supplies going into Gaza throughout the conflict but imposed a total blockade of supplies from March to May 2025, saying that Hamas was stealing assistance to pay for its military operations. Though restrictions were eventually eased amid international outrage, famine was declared in parts of Gaza in August.

The impact of Israel’s offensive on Gaza has led to accusations of genocide, which Israel has denied. In September, independent experts working for the UN high commissioner for human rights said that the death toll and destruction in Gaza met its criteria for a genocide. This, too, was challenged by Israel.

The war, triggered by a Hamas raid into Israel on 7 October 2023 which killed approximately 1,200 people and took a further 251 as hostages, has devastated Gaza, in physical and human terms. Almost all Palestinians in the territory have been displaced, usually many times. Entire cities have been reduced to dust and broken concrete. Witnesses of attacks, or victims of the violence around some food distribution sites, or medics in overwhelmed hospitals describe “post-apocalyptic landscapes” or “hell on earth”... READ MORE   https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/oct/07/the-ruin-of-gaza-how-israel-two-year-assault-has-devastated-the-territory?CMP=GTUS_email

  AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies] 

Declaration of famine in Gaza lays bare Israel’s disregard for humanitarian duty 

Always, no matter what.... Even Wars Have Rules

Always, no matter what.

 

ICRC https://www.icrc.org/en

The Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols are at the core of international humanitarian law, the body of international law that regulates the conduct of armed conflict and seeks to limit its effects. They specifically protect people who are not taking part in the hostilities, including civilians, health workers and aid workers, and those who are no longer participating, such as wounded, sick and shipwrecked soldiers and prisoners of war. The Conventions and their Protocols call for measures to be taken to prevent or put an end to all breaches. They contain stringent rules to deal with what are known as "grave breaches". Those who commit grave breaches must be pursued and tried or extradited, whatever their nationality. 

Because of Us... poem by Emily Berry + Democracy Now "As the WHO warns Gaza’s hospitals are becoming cemeteries, it’s time to heed the poets and the doctors, stop the killing, end the occupation, and dress the open wounds of war."

 

The Undressed Wounds of Gaza

"... The late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, as a child, survived the 1948 Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” when 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and 15,000 were killed during Israel’s founding. Darwish lived much of his life in exile and was a critic of Hamas. He wrote in his poem, “To A Young Poet,”

“A poem in a difficult time
is beautiful flowers in a cemetery.”

As the WHO warns Gaza’s hospitals are becoming cemeteries, it’s time to heed the poets and the doctors, stop the killing, end the occupation, and dress the open wounds of war."  https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/16/the_undressed_wounds_of_gaza

Gaza death toll surpasses 35,000 amid Israeli onslaught & At least 78,755 other Palestinian men, women, and children have been injured in the Israeli onslaught as of May 10th, 2024

Destroyed buildings due to Israeli attacks are seen as Palestinians, residing in the region, struggle with significant challenges amidst rubbles in Northern Gaza, Gaza on May 10, 2024. [Dawoud Abo Alkas – Anadolu Agency]

The Palestinian death toll from Israel’s ongoing offensive on the Gaza Strip has surged since last October to 35,034 people, the Health Ministry in the besieged enclave said on Sunday, Anadolu Agency reports.

At least 78,755 other people have been injured in the onslaught, the ministry added in a statement.

“Israeli attacks killed 63 people and injured 114 others in the last 24 hours,” the statement said.

“Many people are still trapped under rubble and on the roads as rescuers are unable to reach them,” it added.

Israel has waged a brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas last Oct. 7 which killed some 1,200 people.

READ: Israeli forces kill at least 18 Palestinians in Rafah in last 24 hours

Tel Aviv has also imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

More than seven months into the conflict, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). An interim ruling in January said it is “plausible” that Tel Aviv is committing genocide in Gaza, ordering it to stop such acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

South Africa on Friday asked the ICJ to order Israel to withdraw from the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1.5 million displaced people have been sheltered, as part of additional emergency measures over the war.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240512-gaza-death-toll-surpasses-35000-amid-israeli-onslaught/

Israel's War on Palestinian men, women and children imprisoned in Gaza & the Illegally Occupied West Bank... latest figures Oct 7-Jan 28

The plight of Gaza’s ‘WCNSFs’ – wounded child, no surviving family: "The numbers of Gaza’s dead, wounded and orphaned children are uncertain but there is no question they have borne the brunt of the war"

"“We had a 14-year-old girl [on Wednesday last week] just walk out of some war zone of Gaza City, stunned, mute, bloodied, and she absolutely had no one,” he said. “How many other children are like that right now? We simply don’t know.”" 

"For Gaza’s children, there is no end in sight to the horror. Even the relatively lucky ones – those who have not been wounded and still have their parents – are at increasing risk from disease, starvation and exposure as winter approaches. Many of them are in vast camps of makeshift tents that have sprung up in Rafah and elsewhere in the south."

The plight of Gaza’s ‘WCNSFs’ – wounded child, no surviving family

 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/22/the-plight-of-gazas-wcnsfs-wounded-child-no-surviving-family

A chilling acronym used by aid workers reflects the reality of a conflict in which 40% of casualties are believed to be minors

by Nedal Samir Hamdouna and Aseel Mousa in Gaza, and Julian Borger in Jerusalem

Fri 22 Dec 2023 00.00 EST

When Yousef al-Dawi tries to go to sleep in his aunt’s house in Rafah, he thinks about resting his head in his mother’s hands, his father taking him on outings, and most of all, learning to swim with his brother, Mahmoud – taking himself away to a world that no longer exists.

The bomb that fell on his family’s house in Jabaliya at midnight on 23 October killed his whole family and left the 10-year-old pinned under the rubble. It was three days before he regained consciousness in a hospital bed, and his surviving relatives tried to put off breaking the news to him, telling him the rest of his family were in another hospital. Eventually they had to tell him they were all dead.

Since then...  READ MORE

 [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES or quotes or watch videos IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]