At least those half of the buildings in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or completely destroyed since the Israel/Hamas war broke out nearly four months ago, the BBC reported on Tuesday.

Satellite data analyzed by US university researchers, the findings of which were made available to the network, show that between 144,000 and 175,000 buildings have been damaged or completely destroyed since October 7. This number corresponds to 50 to 61% of all buildings in the Palestinian enclave.

The satellite images, analyzed by Corey Sher of the City University of New York and Jamon Van Den Hook of Oregon State University, also confirm that shelling of the southern and central Gaza Strip has escalated since early December.

Khan Younis, the largest city in the southern Gaza Strip, which Israeli officers describe as the “capital,” the main stronghold of Hamas, has been hit extremely hard, according to the analysis.

At least 38,000 buildings in Khan Yunis were damaged or completely destroyed.

Across the Palestinian enclave, neighborhoods were destroyed, busy shopping streets reduced to rubble, universities flattened, crops parched, the BBC reports.

According to the UN, more than 1.3 million of the 2.2 million residents of the Gaza Strip have been displaced and have taken refuge in makeshift camps in tents in Rafah, at the southern end of the enclave, on the border with Egypt.

The trigger for this war was the unprecedented attack by Hamas on October 7 in southern sectors of Israeli territory which claimed the lives of approximately 1,140 people, the majority of them civilians.

In retaliation, Israel’s civil-military leadership vowed to “wipe out” the Palestinian Islamist movement, and its military operations since then, the most extensive ever conducted in the Gaza Strip, have killed some 27,000 people, the vast majority of them women and children. according to data from the Hamas Health Ministry.

The political and military authorities of Israel assure that they are waging war against Hamas and not against the civilian population. They accuse Hamas of launching attacks from hospitals, civilian buildings and residential areas. The Palestinian Islamist movement rejects the accusation.