Newsletters
Fresh Google Maps satellite imagery has laid bare the scale of destruction across Gaza, showing neighborhoods reduced to rubble, damaged places of worship and sprawling displacement camps nearly three years after the war began.
The images, taken in June 2026, also point to further destruction since a fragile ceasefire came into effect almost 12 months earlier, while Gaza's 2.3 million residents continue to face a severe humanitarian crisis.
Along large stretches of Gaza's shoreline, rows of tents and makeshift shelters now occupy areas once dominated by homes, businesses and public infrastructure.
Gaza's main port, previously a busy center for fishing activity, appears heavily damaged and largely empty of fishing boats, while temporary shelters have sprung up around it.
In Gaza City, nearly every available open area visible in the imagery appears packed with tents, huts and makeshift structures housing displaced residents.
The scale of displacement remains enormous. According to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, more than 2.1 million displaced people are living in tents and temporary shelters across Gaza.
The imagery also shows extensive destruction in northern towns including Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun.
In Gaza City, major neighborhoods including Jabaliya and Shuja'iya, which were repeatedly targeted during Israeli offensives, appear heavily devastated and uninhabitable.
Further south, large stretches of rubble can be seen across Rafah, while a broad strip of land along Gaza's border with Egypt appears to have been cleared by Israeli forces.
Rafah itself appears almost entirely reduced to ruins, while Tel al-Sultan has been razed to the ground.
Places of worship have also been destroyed, including the Istiqlal Mosque in Khan Younis.
Around 82% of Gaza's structures, equivalent to roughly 200,000 buildings, have been damaged, according to UNRWA, with around two-thirds of those structures destroyed.
A recent United Nations assessment found that the number of destroyed structures across Gaza had risen by another 9% since the ceasefire was declared in October 2025.
The new satellite imagery therefore captures not only the cumulative destruction caused during the war, but also damage recorded during the period following the ceasefire.
The physical destruction has also created another humanitarian challenge: an extraordinary volume of debris covering large parts of the territory.
Jaco Cilliers, the U.N. Development Programme's special representative in Palestine, told The Guardian in September that Gaza was estimated to contain 61 million tons of rubble.
"The estimate of the total amount of rubble in Gaza is 61m tonnes. It is approximately 20 times the amount of rubble generated in all wars across the world over the last 18 years," Cilliers said.
Human remains are still believed to be buried beneath parts of the rubble, making their recovery one of the most urgent humanitarian problems facing Gaza.
More than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began, most of them civilians.
The conflict followed the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023, when militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 others hostage.
Set as preferred source
Set as preferred source
1 min read
1 min read
