- Updated Google Maps satellite images reveal widespread destruction across Gaza neighborhoods
- Entire blocks in Gaza appear flattened with rubble covering streets and former building sites
- Damage is visible near Al-Shifa Hospital, showing severe harm to medical facilities and infrastructure
Updated Google Maps satellite imagery is offering a stark view of the destruction across Gaza, with entire neighbourhoods appearing flattened and vast stretches of land covered in rubble. The newly updated images show roads cutting through areas where buildings once stood, highlighting the scale of damage across parts of the Palestinian territory.
In some parts, entire blocks look covered in grey rubble. People can't identify individual buildings.
Markers for schools, mosques, parks and restaurants can still be seen on the map in some areas. These markers, however, only show the locations of places mapped earlier. They do not confirm whether the buildings are still standing.
Places in Khan Younis and Rafah also show streets and neighbourhoods covered with rubble.
Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed was among those who shared posts about the reported changes.
"Large parts of the Gaza Strip have been updated on Google Maps. I've walked through much of the destruction in Gaza myself, but I couldn't bear looking at the map," he wrote on X.
"I've been to those places, I have seen the scale of the destruction - it was really heartbreaking. But when you see all the destruction in just one active website, it really broke my heart," Abed told The New Arab.
He said he found it difficult to keep looking at the images because they showed places where he grew up and was born now covered in ruins.
The outlet has also reported that the area around Al-Shifa Hospital, once Gaza's largest medical complex, shows extensive damage. Israeli forces withdrew from the hospital on April 1, 2024, after a two-week siege.
A World Health Organization mission that reached the site days later described it as an "empty shell" and reported major damage to its emergency, surgical and maternity buildings.
"What I was most struck by is that every place that I used to visit before the genocide was a mountain of rubble, and heaps of rubble are everywhere," Abed said.
A UN report published on September 24 estimated that around 1.9 million people in Gaza had been displaced, with many forced to move more than once. It also said more than 60 percent of the population had lost their homes.
It said that Gaza would need around $71.5 billion for recovery and reconstruction because 92 percent of economic establishments in the territory had been damaged or destroyed since October 2023.
An assessment released in April by the UN and European Union, with the World Bank, found that more than 3,71,888 housing units had been damaged or destroyed, more than 50 % of hospitals are non-functional, nearly all schools destroyed or damaged, and the economy has contracted by 84% in Gaza.
Israel's war on Gaza has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians since October 2023, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.
