The declared aims of the bombing campaign launched by Israel on Gaza on October 7 were to cause destruction and kill Hamas leaders after the attack carried out by the Islamist movement which killed 1,400 people in Israel. Israeli raids, limited on the first day, have since become incessant. Since October 8, bombs have fallen continuously all over the enclave. They have mainly killed civilians.

This is a first. During the 2014 war, destruction had been concentrated in areas close to the barrier that separates Gaza from Israel. The neighborhoods of Shuja'iyya in the east, Beit Hanoun in the north and the eastern Khan Yunis had been virtually wiped off the map during this ground invasion. In 2021, in downtown Gaza, the Ar Rimal neighborhood, with its banks, ministries and residential apartments, where NGOs and headquarters of international organizations are also concentrated, was hit massively for the first time by the Israeli Air Force. Israel's latest bombing campaign largely destroyed it on October 10, the day it was concentrated on Gaza City.

Six days after the start of the offensive, the Israeli army announced that it had already dropped 6,000 bombs, or 4,000 tonnes of explosives, on the 41-kilometer-long strip of land, 6 to 12 kilometers wide to the south, wedged between the Mediterranean Sea, Israel and Egypt, and one of the most densely populated areas in the world with some 2.3 million residents). It's been under blockade since 2007. According to provisional figures from the Gaza authorities, more than 3,400 people living in the Gaza Strip, including over a thousand children, have been killed since the start of the war, and 12,000 have been wounded.

Sources: Destruction analysis by Masae Analytics, based on Sentinel-1 data acquired between September 18 and October 17; Copernicus; Global Human Settlement Layer; European Commission; Insecurity Insight; OCHA; Le Monde

Infographic: Le Monde