Bombing of the Gaza Strip (2023–present)

The bombing of the Gaza Strip is an ongoing aerial bombardment campaign on the Gaza Strip by the Israeli Air Force during the Israel–Hamas war. During the bombing, Israeli airstrikes damaged or destroyed Palestinian refugee camps, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, and other civilian infrastructure. by late April 2024 it was estimated that Israel had dropped over 70,000 tons of bombs over Gaza, surpassing the bombing of Dresden, Hamburg, and London combined during World War II.

Israel has faced accusations of war crimes due to the large number of civilian casualties and the large percentage of civilian infrastructure destroyed. In its defense, Israel stated that it utilized a wide-scale evacuation notification system, and claimed that its targets were used by Hamas. By January 2024, researchers at Oregon State University and the City University of New York estimated that as much as 62% of all buildings in the Gaza Strip had been damaged or destroyed. In its defense, Israel has claimed only 16% of Gaza buildings were destroyed.

Background
Israel's bombing campaign of the Gaza Strip began the same day as Hamas militants and their allies launched armed incursions into Israel. In prior conflicts — such as the 2014 Gaza War — Israel damaged or destroyed tens of thousands of buildings. Rebuilding costs in prior conflicts have estimated to range in the billions of dollars.

Medical facilities
On 22 October 2023, Israeli airplanes bombed the areas around the Al Shifa and Al Quds hospitals on a night described as the "bloodiest" of the conflict so far. On 29 October 2023, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombed the area around the Al-Quds hospital. On 30 October 2023, Israel bombed the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital. On 3 November 2023, the Health Ministry stated 136 paramedics had been killed, and 25 ambulance vehicles had been destroyed. On the same day, Israel bombed a medical convoy outside of al-Shifa hospital. The IDF claimed the ambulance was being used by Hamas, leading Queen's University professor Ardi Imseis to state Israel needed to prove its claim. On 6 November 2023, at least eight people died in airstrikes on the Nasser Medical Complex.

By April 2024, 30 out of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip had been bombed, according to Save the Children and UNICEF.

Refugee camps


On 23 October 2023, airstrikes killed 436 people in the Al-Shati camp and southern Khan Younis in one night. By 28 October 2023, the Israeli Air Force bombed residential buildings in the Jabalia refugee camp without any prior warning, killing an estimated 50 people per hour. On 31 October 2023, an airstrike on the Jabalia refugee camp was described as a "massive massacre". On 13 November, an Israeli airstrike on the Jabalia refugee camp killed thirty people, with Gaza's civil defence team unable to rescue injured people from the rubble due to a lack of equipment. By 6 March 2024, aerial footage showed that the Al-Shati refugee camp, which had been one of the world's most densely populated areas before the war, was in complete ruins.

Schools
An airstrike at a UNRWA school killed at least six people. On 18 October 2023, the Ahmed Abdel Aziz School in Khan Yunis was hit. On 3 November 2023, the IDF bombed the Osama Ben Zaid school. On 4 November 2023, Israel bombed the Al-Fakhoora school, killing at least fifteen people. On 5 November 2023, Israel bombed and destroyed Al-Azhar University.

On 17 November 2023, dozens were reported killed after an airstrike on al-Falah School in the Zeitoun neighborhood, south of Gaza City. A strike on the Al-Fakhoora school reportedly killed at least 50. Deaf, blind, and intellectually handicapped individuals were at particular risk of death by airstrikes. On 13 December 2023, a UNRWA school in Beit Hanoun was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike.

By late-March 2024, the United Nations had recorded 212 "direct hits" on schools in Gaza by Israeli bombardment, with at least 53 schools totally destroyed.

Housing and infrastructure
On 16 October 2023, Israeli airstrikes destroyed a UNRWA humanitarian aid supply depot. The same day, airstrikes destroyed the headquarters of the Palestinian Civil Defence, an agency responsible for emergency response services, including firefighting and search and rescue. Journalists reported Israel was targeting solar panels and personal generators. On 15 November 2023, Gaza's last remaining flour mill was hit by an Israeli airstrike.

On 12 November 2023, Israel used earthquake bombs on an apartment complex in Khan Yunis, killing at least thirteen people. 26 people were killed in an airstrike of a residential building in southern Gaza on 18 November. By 28 November 2023, a United Nations (UN)-led consortium estimated 60 percent of all housing in Gaza had been destroyed. Numerous casualties were reported in an airstrike on a residential building near Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, with hospital staff reporting having to bury 40 bodies on the hospital grounds. On 4 February 2024, two residential towers in Rafah were bombed, part of a series of strikes killing 127 people. 104 people were killed between 21 and 23 February 2024 in residential building airstrikes conducted without prior warning. In March 2024, a man in Gaza City described the situation there, stating, "Destruction on a massive scale, beyond any description. Our homes were destroyed. Nothing remained of our property".

In March 2024, a joint report by the EU, World Bank, and UN estimated 57 percent of water infrastructure was damaged or destroyed. Sewage overflowed as a result of the infrastructural damage. In May 2024, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics and Ministry of Communications and Information Technology stated that 75 percent of Gaza's telecoms towers had been rendered inoperable by Israeli attacks. In June 2024, UNOSAT stated 57 percent of Gaza's agricultural land had been degraded by conflict.

Places of worship
On 19 October 2023, an Israeli airstrike hit the Church of Saint Porphyrius, where 500 people were sheltering. On 8 November 2023, Israel bombed and destroyed the Khalid bin al-Walid Mosque. By 13 November 2023, at least sixty mosques had been destroyed by Israeli bombs. In December 2023, an Israeli bombing destroyed the Great Mosque of Gaza. At least seven people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Rafah mosque full of displaced people on 23 February 2024. Five people were killed in a mosque in northern Gaza that was bombed without warning. The al-Riad mosque in Khan Younis was heavily damaged by an Israeli bombing on 9 March 2024.

By 10 March 2024, more than 1,000 mosques had been destroyed by Israeli attacks. In May 2024, an Israeli bombing on a mosque in Gaza City reportedly killed at least 10 people.

Safe zones
On 17 October 2023, Israel conducted intensive airstrikes in southern Gaza, in areas it told residents to seek refuge. Israel "pounded" areas in south Gaza it had declared as "safe zones", raising fears amongst residents that nowhere was safe. On 20 October 2023, Israeli continued to bombard south Gaza, and IDF spokesman Nir Dinar said, "There are no safe zones". Following Israel's evacuation orders for Palestinians to flee northern Gaza, the IDF intensified its attacks on southern Gaza.

Analyses by CNN, The New York Times, and Sky News all found that Israel had bombed areas it had previously told civilians to evacuate to. The Sky News investigation also concluded that Israel's evacuation orders had been "chaotic and contradictory", NYT found that Israel had dropped 2,000-pound bombs in those areas, while CNN stated it had verified at least three locations Israel bombed after telling civilians it was safe to go there.

On 5 January 2024, evacuees fleeing Israeli attacks in central Gaza stated the situation there was "hell on Earth". One survivor of an Israeli airstrike wrote, "Even though that air strike did not kill us, it destroyed something inside us." On 12 January, the UN Secretary-General for Human Rights stated that at least 319 internally displaced persons were killed and 1,135 injured by Israeli airstrikes while sheltering in UN shelters. After an Israeli bomb killed two sheltering in a tent in Deir el-Balah on 23 February 2024, a surviving family member stated, "It's just a tent. They are displaced and evacuated from the north here to seek refuge. They were sleeping. Why were they attacked? Even in tents, we are not safe." After a bombing on tents in Rafah killed eleven people, Director-General of the WHO Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated it was "outrageous and unspeakable".

Missing persons


On 15 October 2023, more than 1,000 people were reported missing beneath rubble. On 27 October 2023, the World Health Organization stated more than 1,000 unidentified people were buried under rubble. On 3 December 2023, the Palestinian Civil Defence stated the situation "beyond dire" as the organization was unable to rescue many people buried under rubble.

Individuals were rescued by aid workers after reportedly surviving several days buried underneath rubble. Emergency responders stated that part of what made rescue so difficult is that Israeli bombs tend to "flatten entire buildings". On 24 February 2024, Dr. Paul B. Spiegel stated that total death counts were undercounts due to the large number of people under rubble, stating, "We projected the number of deaths that may be missing, and it was probably up to about ten to fifteen per cent more." On 26 February 2024, Israeli warplanes bombed and destroyed an emergency rescue machinery in Beit Lahia.

According to The New York Times, "The buried make up a shadow death toll in Gaza, a leaden asterisk to the health ministry’s official tally of more than 31,000 dead". In May 2024, U.S. doctor described the deterioration of rescue operations in Gaza, stating, "We hear bombs and before my thought used to be 'what patients are we going to meet tomorrow?' And now we hear bombs and no one comes." The United Nations stated that more than 10,000 people were estimated to be buried under the rubble.

In late-June 2024 it was reported by Save the Children that up to 21,000 children are estimated to be missing due to the bombing and the ongoing war. While the organization acknowledged that it was difficult to collect and verify information in Gaza, it was believed that about 17,000 children were unaccompanied and separated, about 4,000 likely missing in the rubble and an unknown number in mass graves. In July 2024, emergency crews stated there were many people trapped under debris in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood following heavy attacks by Israel.

AI-assisted targeting


During the bombing campaign, Israel used artificial intelligences to determine what targets the Air Force would bomb. A system known as Habsora, "the Gospel", would automatically provide a targeting recommendation to a human analyst, who would decide whether to pass it along to soldiers in the field. The recommendations can be anything from individual fighters, rocket launchers, Hamas command posts, to private homes of suspected Hamas or Islamic Jihad members. This would automate most of the target selection process.

NPR cited Anthony King, professor of defense and security studies at the University of Exeter, as saying this may be the first time AI-generated targets are being rolled out on a large scale to try and influence a military operation.

October 2023

 * 15 October: In the war's first week, Israel dropped more than 6,000 bombs on Gaza.
 * 16 October: Airstrikes had killed 2,750 people, including more than 700 children, and wounded nearly 10,000.
 * 18 October: The death toll in Gaza had risen to 3,478.
 * 19 October: U.S. officials reported alarm at Israeli comments about the "inevitability" of civilian casualties and reminders about "civilian deaths from the U.S. atomic bombs" in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
 * 21 October: Israel intensified its airstrikes in advance of an expected ground invasion.
 * 26 October: Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu stated Israel had "already eliminated thousands of terrorists – and this is only the beginning".

November 2023

 * 17 November: Historian Raghu Karnad cited reports that Israel had dropped 25,000 tonnes of explosives on Gaza since the beginning of the conflict, stating this was the equivalent of two nuclear bombs.
 * 20 November: Satellite imagery showed half of Northern Gaza had been destroyed by Israeli airstrikes.
 * 24 November: Israel intensified strikes across Gaza before the temporary November ceasefire.
 * 26 November: Israel had dropped an estimated 40,000 tons of explosives on Gaza since the start of the war.

December 2023

 * 1 December: In the hours following the end of the temporary truce between Israel and Hamas, 109 people were killed by Israeli airstrikes.
 * 2 December: The IDF stated it had struck at least 400 locations in Gaza since the pause had ended, including 50 in Khan Younis in Southern Gaza.
 * 3 December: 700 were reported killed in the preceding twenty-four hours.
 * 8 December: 350 people were killed in the preceding twenty-four hours.
 * 9 December: the Palestinian Civil Defence stated it only had one operational rescue vehicle left in the entirety of Northern Gaza.

January 2024

 * 6 January: More than 85% of Palestinians in Gaza, or around 1.9 million people, were internally displaced.
 * 14 January: Israel's offensive had either damaged or destroyed 70–80% of all buildings in northern Gaza.
 * 30 January: At least half of all buildings in the entirety of Gaza had been destroyed or damaged.

February 2024

 * 1 February: The New York Times estimated that at least half of Gaza's buildings had been damaged or destroyed.
 * 2 February: UNOSAT, the UN's satellite centre, found that 69,147 structures, or approximately 30 percent of Gaza's total buildings, had been damaged or destroyed by Israeli airstrikes, shelling, and demolitions.
 * 6 February: Israeli bombing campaigns intensified in Central Gaza, as displaced people in Rafah grew fearful of an impending Israeli attack on the city.

March 2024

 * 2 March: Zeitoun, one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in Gaza before the war, was in ruins, with one resident calling it "destruction on a massive scale beyond any description".
 * 4 March: An F-16 bombed and destroyed a cemetery in the Jabalia refugee camp.
 * 15 March: UNOCHA estimated that there were 23 million tonnes of debris in the Gaza Strip as a result of Israel's bombing campaign, which would take several years to clear.
 * 21 March: UNOSAT stated 88,868 structures, or 35% of buildings in Gaza, had been destroyed or damaged.
 * 31 March: The Wall Street Journal reported on a U.S. government memorandum indicating there is a lack of independent oversight to ensure U.S. intelligence is not used for airstrikes to kill civilians or damage infrastructure.

May 2024

 * 3 May: The United Nations Mine Action Service estimated there were 37 million tonnes of debris containing around 800,000 tonnes of asbestos and other contaminants, and 7,500 tonnes of unexploded ordnance, which could take up to 14 years to clear.

June 2024

 * 3 June: UNOSAT estimated that 55 percent of all buildings had been destroyed, damaged, or possibly damaged.
 * 27 June: IDF says 16% of Gaza buildings destroyed; disputes higher UN figures.

July 2024

 * 11 July: Gaza's Civil Defense Agency stated 85 percent of buildings in Shuja'iyya were destroyed, leaving more than 100,000 homeless.
 * 17 July: An Israeli air raid destroyed the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City.

Reactions
The Financial Times described northern Gaza as a "bombed-out wasteland", and Palestinians feared northern Gaza was becoming uninhabitable. Israel's bombing was described as "unlike any other in the 21st century."

On 6 January 2024, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths stated that Gaza had "simply become uninhabitable". James Elder, the UNICEF spokesman, stated, "I have never seen such devastation. Just chaos and ruin, with rubble and debris scattered in every single direction." Tor Wennesland, the UN special coordinator for Middle East Peace, stated, "Israel’s use of explosive weapons in densely populated areas has destroyed entire neighborhoods and damaged hospitals and other civilian infrastructure, schools, mosques, and United Nations premises."

The EU's top diplomat Josep Borrell stated Israel's objective appeared to be making Gaza "temporarily or permanently impossible to live in". Mary Robinson, the former-president of the Republic of Ireland and leader of The Elders, called on the United States to cease providing bombs to Israel, stating, "Netanyahu is on the wrong side of history, completely".

Analysis
Historian Robert Pape stated, "Gaza will also go down as a place name denoting one of history's heaviest conventional bombing campaigns." Scholars termed the destruction of Gaza a domicide, leading the UN special rapporteur on the right to housing to argue that international law should be amended to consider domicide a war crime. Israel's airstrikes were described as a carpet bombing and "indiscriminate". An US intelligence report found half of the bombs dropped on Gaza had been unguided bombs. Experts stated the bombing campaign against Gaza had been among the deadliest and most destructive in modern history, with Corey Scher of the CUNY Graduate Center stating, "Gaza is now a different color from space." The Wall Street Journal termed Israel's bombing the "most devastating urban warfare in the modern record".

According to analysis by Humanity & Inclusion, approximately 45,000 bombs were dropped on the Gaza Strip in the conflict's first three months, but with a 9% to 14% failure rate, several thousand unexploded bombs lay amongst the ruins. The United Nations Mine Action Service estimated that there was more rubble in Gaza (25 miles long) than in all of Ukraine (600 miles long), with the rubble in Gaza likely "heavily contaminated" by unexploded ordnance. In June 2024, scholars referred to the bombing of Gaza as an example of urbicide, or the "deliberate, widespread destruction of the urban environment".

War crimes
A group of UN special rapporteurs asserted that Israel's airstrikes are indiscriminate, stating that the airstrikes are "absolutely prohibited under international law and amounts to a war crime". Israeli military spokesman Admiral Daniel Hagari said that "while balancing accuracy with the scope of damage, right now we’re focused on what causes maximum damage". A +972 Magazine investigation found the IDF had expanded authorization for bombing non-military targets. Research conducted by Dr. Yagil Levy at the Open University of Israel confirmed the +972 report, which stated Israel was "deliberately targeting residential blocks to cause mass civilian casualties".

During two airstrikes on 10 October and 22 October 2023, the IDF used Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) in attacks described by Amnesty International as "either direct attacks on civilians" or "indiscriminate attacks". Marc Garlasco, a war crimes investigator, stated a JDAM bomb "turns earth to liquid". On 12 January 2024, the spokesperson for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights stated Israel's attacks were failing to account for distinction, proportionality and precautions, thus leaving Israeli exposed to liability for war crimes. IDF has argued that it uses delayed fuzing, so that the bomb explodes underground and minimizes the blast and fragmentation; however, experts argue that delayed fuzing creates a new problem of leveling residential buildings, as was seen in the 31 October 2023 Jabalia refugee camp airstrike. This delayed fuzing "pancakes" buildings and endangers civilians in buildings nearby.

In February 2024, the IDF bombed and destroyed the Belgian government's Gaza development office. In response, Belgium recalled the Israeli ambassador and condemned the "destruction of civilian infrastructure" as a violation of international law. Scott Lucas, a professor at the University of Birmingham, stated Israel's bombing campaign was in breach of the law of proportionality. In June 2024, the UN Human Rights Office published a report stating Israel's use of heavy bombardment raised "serious concerns under the laws of war". The head of an independent U.N. Commission of Inquiry stated Israel's use of heavy weapons in dense areas "constitutes an intentional and direct attack on the civilian population".

Attorney Dylan Saba argues that Israel's dropping of 2,000lb bombs (each with a lethal fragmentation radius of 1,200 feet) in densely populated civilian areas is as indiscriminate as using chemical weapons. This is because such bombs kill everyone within their lethal radius, both militant and civilian, without distinction.

Aftermath
The bombardment left behind a large amount of debris, including unexploded ordnance. An official from United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS), has said it could take up to 14 years to remove the debris, including the rubble of destroyed buildings. As of June 2024, the war left an estimated 39 million tons of debris in a widely urbanized, densely populated area, according to the UN Environment Programme. In July 2024, UNOCHA warned of the "significant risk" of explosive remnants of war and unexploded ordnance on civilians in Gaza, citing multiple casualties caused the unexploded ordnance.

Rebuilding
The Financial Times estimated it would cost billions to rebuild Gaza. Mohammed Mustafa, the chief economist of the Palestine Investment Fund, estimated rebuilding Gaza's homes alone would cost around US$15 billion. The World Bank and the United Nations estimated in April 2024 that the war had caused $18.5 billion dollars worth of damage to Gaza's infrastructure thus far. In May 2024, the United Nations Development Program stated it would take at least until 2040 to rebuild the homes destroyed in Gaza.