Gaza Strip in maps: How life has changed

Almost two million people in Gaza - most of the population - are reported to have fled their homes since Israel began its military operation in response to Hamas's deadly attacks of 7 October.

The Strip has been under the control of Hamas since 2007 and Israel says it is trying to destroy the military and governing capabilities of the Islamist group, which is committed to the destruction of Israel.

Gaza - a densely populated enclave 41km (25 miles) long and 10km wide, bounded by the Mediterranean Sea on one side and fenced off from Israel and Egypt at its borders - has "simply become uninhabitable", according to United Nations officials.

Israel warned civilians to evacuate the area of Gaza north of the Wadi Gaza riverbed, ahead of its invasion in the weeks after the Hamas attack.

The evacuation area included Gaza City - which was the most densely populated area of the Gaza Strip. The Erez border crossing into Israel in the north is closed, so those living in the evacuation zone had no choice but to head towards the southern districts.

After an intense bombing campaign and ground invasion into northern Gaza and Gaza City, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have refocused operations on southern Gaza. The main urban areas in the south - Khan Younis and Rafah - have been bombed and Israeli troops have clashed with Hamas fighters on the ground. Palestinians, including those who fled fighting in the north, had been told to move to a so-called "safe area" at al-Mawasi, a thin strip of mainly agricultural land along the Mediterranean coast, close to the Egyptian border.

Fighting in Khan Younis and Deir al Balah has already pushed tens of thousands of people to flee to the southern district of Rafah, the UN said, where more than one million people "are squeezed into an extremely overcrowded space".

According to the UN, just over 75% of Gaza's population - some 1.7 million people - were already registered refugees before Israel warned Palestinians to leave northern Gaza.

Palestinian refugees are defined by the UN as people whose "place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 War". More than 500,000 of the refugee population lived in eight crowded camps located across the Strip.

Following Israel's warnings after 7 October, many of those refugees joined the hundreds of thousands of people forced to flee their homes, the UN says.

About 1.7 million Palestinians are now gathered in emergency shelters or informal sites set up nearby.

On average, before the conflict, there were more than 5,700 people per sq km in Gaza - very similar to the average density in London - but that figure was more than 9,000 in Gaza City, the most heavily populated area. The UN says more than half of Gaza's population is now crammed into Rafah - a town of originally 250,000 people.

"Their living conditions are abysmal - they lack the basic necessities to survive, stalked by hunger, disease and death," according to the UN's relief co-ordinator Martin Griffiths.

The UN warns that overcrowding has become a major concern in its emergency shelters in central and southern Gaza, with some far exceeding their capacity.

Many of these emergency shelters are schools and in some there are dozens of people living in a single classroom. Other families are living in tents or makeshift shelters in compounds or on open areas of waste ground.

Areas of new tents that sprung up close to the Egyptian border between the start of December and middle of January cover roughly 3.5 sq km, equivalent to nearly 500 Premier League football pitches.

The satellite images, captured on 15 October and 14 January, show a dramatic change - now nearly every patch of accessible, undeveloped ground in an area of north-west Rafah has been turned into a refuge for displaced people.

Even before the current conflict, about 80% of the population of Gaza was in need of humanitarian aid, and although Israel has been allowing some aid in from Egypt, aid agencies say it is nowhere near enough.

They say that half of Gaza's population is starving and most of the population regularly go without food for a whole day. Save the Children said people were being forced to forage for scraps of food left by rats and eat leaves out of desperation to survive.

A seven-day ceasefire at the end of November allowed agencies to deliver an average of 170 trucks and 110,000 litres of fuel a day, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says. The daily average is now about 76.

Aid trucks are still crossing into Gaza, but the WHO has warned that delivering that aid "continues to face near insurmountable challenges" as the area endures intense bombardment, movement restrictions, interrupted communications and fuel shortages.

Israel has already launched hundreds of airstrikes across Gaza. US intelligence assessments seen by CNN says Israel has used more than 29,000 bombs and missiles since the start of the conflict, causing extensive damage to buildings and infrastructure.

The World health Organization says up to 80% of civilian infrastructure - including homes, hospitals, schools, water, and sanitation facilities - have been destroyed or severely damaged and will take billions of dollars of investment over decades to recover.

The UN's environmental programme says it could take between three and 12 years just to clear the debris and explosive remnants of war.

Gazan officials warn more than 500,000 people will have no homes to return to, and many more will not be able to return immediately after the conflict because of damage to surrounding infrastructure.

The map below - using analysis of satellite data by Corey Scher of CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University - shows which urban areas have sustained concentrated damage since the start of the conflict.

They say at least 150,000 buildings across the whole Gaza Strip have suffered damage. North Gaza and Gaza City have borne the brunt of this, with at least 80% of buildings in the two northern regions believed to have been damaged, but their analysis now suggests up to 64% of buildings in the Khan Younis area have also been damaged.

Many healthcare facilities have been left unable to function as a result of bomb damage or lack of supplies and fuel.

The UN says hospital capacity is overstretched and only 12 of Gaza's 36 hospitals are still partially functioning.

More than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals were killed during the Hamas attacks on 7 October. Almost 30,000 Palestinians - including about 8,000 children - have been killed in Israeli airstrikes and operations since then, according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry.

It is difficult for the BBC to verify exact numbers, but the UN's World Health Organization (WHO) has said it has no reason to believe the figures are inaccurate.

Israeli officials initially claimed the airstrikes would accompanied by a "complete siege" of Gaza by Israel, with electricity, food and fuel supplies cut, followed by military action on the ground.

The IDF began its ground operations by moving into Gaza from the north-west along the coast and into the north east near Beit Hanoun. A few days later Israeli forces cut across the middle of the territory to the south of Gaza City.

Armoured bulldozers created routes for tanks and troops, as the Israeli forces tried to clear the area of Hamas fighters based in northern Gaza.

Having cut Gaza in two, the Israelis pushed further into Gaza City, where they faced resistance from Hamas. While Israeli forces have since conducted ground operations across much of northern Gaza, there are still clashes in some areas, analysts from the Institute for the Study of War.

The image below, released by the IDF, shows tanks and armoured bulldozers on the beach near Gaza City.

A photo of the same beach from last summer shows people making the most of a hot day in Gaza, families splashing in the sea or sitting on fanning out along the beach.

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