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 killed thousands of civilians and militants, and damaged or destroyed Palestinian schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, and other civilian infrastructure including refugee camps.[2][3]
By October 2024, Israel said it bombed 40,000 locations[4] in the Gaza Strip (which is 360 km2). By one estimate, the bomb tonnage dropped on Gaza is more than 70,000 tonnes,[5] surpassing the bomb tonnage dropped on Dresden, Hamburg, and London, combined, in World War II.[6] Satellite imagery showed 62% of all buildings were damaged or destroyed,[7] which also meets or exceeds the scale of destruction in Cologne, Dresden and Hamburg during World War II.[2] The death toll from all Israeli attacks – both bombing and non-bombing – exceeds 45,000. Of this total, AOAV estimates that more than 25,000 civilians (and an unknown number of combatants) were killed by explosive weapons in the deadliest 3,921 bombings.[1]
Israel has faced accusations of war crimes due to the large number of civilian casualties and the large percentage of civilian infrastructure destroyed.[8] Meanwhile, Israel stated that it utilized a wide-scale evacuation notification system,[a] and claimed that its targets were used by Hamas. The United Nations reports that 86% of the Gaza Strip is under Israeli evacuation orders.[10] Satellite data analysis indicates that 80% of the buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed.[11] As of January 2024, researchers at Oregon State University and the City University of New York estimated that as much as 50–62% of all buildings in the Gaza Strip had been damaged or destroyed.[12][7][c]
