Scale of vast tent city in Gaza revealed – with destruction leaving residents little to return to
Khalid Abo Middain used his hands, a hammer and a small shovel to build his own shelter on the outskirts of a fast-growing refugee camp near Rafah City in southern Gaza.
The father-of-three arrived there with his family after fleeing four times from Israel’s war against Hamas over the course of three months.
They originally left Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza after the war broke out and are unsure of what remains of their family home.
“I do not know how it is, because there is no means of communication at the moment,” he said, looking out at rows of makeshift tents.
“What is important is to find yourself in a place where you stay temporarily till this dark cloud is cleared.”
One hundred days into the war between Israel and Hamas, much of Gaza lies in ruins. Architecture and human rights experts say the scale of destruction and displacement is “immense” and unlike anything they’ve seen in Gaza before.
Since the start of the war, 1.9 million people have been displaced from their homes, according to the UN, and Rafah governorate is now the main refuge for those displaced. Over one million people have been crammed into a growing refugee camp that lies just north of Rafah City.
Satellite images show the camp’s expansion with an increasing number of makeshift shelters appearing on the outskirts of Rafah in just three weeks, between 3 and 31 December. The camp is the largest of its kind to emerge since the war began.
‘Everywhere is just so overcrowded’
“These spaces are not fit to hold the number of people that are being forced to live there,” said Nadia Hardman, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, who has been speaking to displaced Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including Rafah. “Everywhere is just so overcrowded,” she told Sky News.
“What you have right now is more than half the population stuffed inside an area that was never meant to contain that many people. And the shelters that are being used are not designed for that purpose. So people are just making do, setting up tented spaces wherever they can.”
Satellite imagery from 6 January shows tents spilling out into the streets and parks of Rafah.
“We’ve never seen anything on this scale,” said Fatina Abreek-Zubiedat, assistant professor of architecture at Tel Aviv University, whose research focuses on transitional spaces in conflict zones.
By 6 January, the camp had exploded into a tent city of 2.9 sq km – equivalent to almost 400 football pitches.
The camp encompasses a UN facility, which was set up as a logistics hub for operations and as the main warehouse for basic food storage. It’s now doubling as a shelter, with hundreds of tents crowding inside and around the property.
“[People] are in an environment with limited to no services, with no reliable electricity, running water. So you can’t run a humanitarian operation in the way that you would want to,” said Hardman, the researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Rafah’s population has grown fourfold since the outbreak of war, according to the UN. The city lies along the border with Egypt, currently Gaza’s only access to the outside world. It is here where meagre aid supplies arrive, and where many Gazans await permission to flee the territory.
Aid organisations are under increasing pressure to provide humanitarian assistance to the growing number of people flooding the area.
“We’re gradually being cornered in a very restrictive perimeter in southern Gaza, in Rafah, with dwindling options to offer critical medical assistance, while the needs are desperately growing,” said Thomas Lauvin, Medecins Sans Frontieres project coordinator in Gaza.
Sky News journalists in Gaza visited the camp in Rafah.
Eman Ismail Zweidi and her children look at photos from before the war
Many of the residents have built their own tents. Children’s clothes hang from makeshift washing lines as Gazans queue to fill up bottles and buckets against the backdrop of a sea of tents. Some families have even built their own bathrooms.
Eman Ismail Zweidi and her family set up their shelter in the western part of the camp. The seven of them had fled Beit Hanoun the day the war started and have been on the move until recently settling in Rafah.
Violence seemed to follow them everywhere they went. Two days after they arrived in Rafah, they learned the buildings they had been staying at just days before in Khan Younis were hit.
“We became very distressed by moving from one place to another,” she said. “Every new place we moved into was more difficult than the previous one.”
Eman Ismail Zweidi’s family’s tents are located in the western part of the Rafah camp. Pic: Planet Labs PBC
On a crisp January afternoon, they gathered around Ms Zweidi’s phone, looking at images from their life before the war began. “Duaa! This is your first day in nursery. Do you remember when I photographed you and combed your hair?”, she said.
One of Ms Zweidi’s youngest daughters, Duaa, smiles at the camera, wearing pigtails and her school uniform.
Duaa’s first day at nursery
“We could expect that these camps will exist not for months, but unfortunately, perhaps for years after the war will end,” said Irit Katz, associate professor of architecture and urban studies at Cambridge University, who has extensively researched the development of refugee camps in the Middle East and around the world.
The camp is on desert terrain and given the influx of displaced Gazans and limited supplies, conditions are worsening. The area lacks a sewage system and there is no running water or electricity. There is no centralised organisation inside the camp and families build their own homes.
“Usually, camps are created as temporary spaces that are supposed to exist only for a defined period. They’re not adequately linked to other environments,” said Ms Katz.
“People’s ability to inhabit them and to actually create a place that they could call home is very, very limited,” she said.
It’s difficult to gauge the exact number of people at the Rafah camp. And numbers keep growing as more people flee the violence farther north. It’s not just families, but also displaced individuals from areas in the north like Gaza City and Beit Hanoun.
Nearly two-thirds of the Gaza Strip is under Israeli evacuation orders, according to the UN.
In the remaining areas, satellite imagery analysed by Sky News shows that refugee camps made up largely of makeshift shelters have rapidly expanded.
But for these Gazans who have fled to camps for safety, there is little or nothing to return to. Satellite radar data shows the extent of the damage to buildings from Israeli strikes.
The destruction is especially severe in the north, where Gaza City has seen some of the fiercest bombardment of the war.
“We are talking about years, if not decades, that it will take to rebuild the original homes and areas of those currently displaced,” said Ms Katz, the Cambridge professor.
Palestine Square, in Gaza City’s Rimal neighbourhood, was home to a mosque, a school for deaf children and a fruit market. Satellite images show that the square has been completely destroyed.
Just under three kilometres north of the square was Gaza’s Blue Beach Resort. It was once described as “the first luxurious seaside vacation spot in the Gaza Strip”, with more than 150 rooms, several swimming pools and dotted with palm trees.
In early January, the IDF claimed it had “demolished” a network of Hamas tunnels underneath the hotel.
In some heavily damaged areas, Israeli forces have left other marks of their presence.
The satellite images below show two Stars of David, a Jewish symbol used on the Israeli flag, marked outside a school in Beit Hanoun (left) on the campus of the Islamic University of Gaza, in Gaza City (right).
Stars of David visible outside a school in Beit Hanoun (4 December) and on the campus of the Islamic University of Gaza, Gaza City (7 January). Pic: Planet Labs PBC
In central Gaza, the destruction is equally as stark.
Bureij is a Palestinian refugee camp located east of the Salah al-Din Road which runs from the north to the south of the strip. In five weeks, dozens of fields and houses less than two kilometres away from the border with Israel were destroyed.
Tobias Borck, a senior Research Fellow for Middle East Security at RUSI, a thinktank, told Sky News “the future for Gazans looks pretty grim,” and added that in the context of displaced people in this war differs from many others.
“Israel is essentially fighting a war in a completely closed-off piece of territory. The people that live in Gaza cannot go anywhere,” he said.
“There are a few things about this war that are absolutely unique, and one is this question around refugees and displaced people… in the Israeli-Palestinian context, history suggests to the Palestinian people that every time they become refugees, they leave an area, and they are not able to go back.”
As for the future of who governs Gaza, Mr Borck said there has been some “push back” from the Israeli government to the international community to outline a plan for what comes next after the war.
“How is that going to happen? Who is going to pay for it? It remains a completely unanswered question”, said Mr Borck of rebuilding and finding political control in Gaza.
“This next challenge is at a completely different scale,” he said.
“For quite a long time we will be watching what is a devastating, unsustainable humanitarian crisis that is sustained because no one comes up with a workable solution.”
Additional reporting from Sky News’ Gaza team.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
The world’s largest aircraft carrier is steaming towards the Caribbean supported by the rest of its “carrier group” to add even more muscle to the US forces already threateningly close to Venezuela.
The question is simple – is this really all about President Trump‘s war on drugs in South America?
I doubt it. A sledgehammer to crack a nut isn’t even in it.
There are a few reasons to doubt the American government’s stated aim of wiping out these so-called “narco terrorist” gangs threatening the US from Venezuela, even after one takes out of the equation the sort of equipment the military is deploying – which isn’t what they would need for effective drug smuggling interdiction.
While the president acknowledges that the synthetic opioid fentanyl is a huge killer in the US (which it is) and is supplied by drug gangs (which it is), to blame Venezuela for fentanyl production is simply incorrect.
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Is Trump tackling cartels or trying to ‘control’ Venezuela?
Mexican cartels produce fentanyl with precursors largely supplied from China, and it is from Mexico – America’s neighbour – that the fentanyl is smuggled directly into the United States across its southern border.
Venezuela isn’t involved in this fentanyl business in any meaningful way, and I know this because I have reported from the Sinaloa cartel’s fentanyl production labs in Mexico.
The Mexican cartels are very proud of their business, and from my experience covering this story over the years, when the drugs cartels are proud of something, and it makes them a lot of money – which fentanyl does – they don’t share the market with anyone, and certainly not with Venezuela.
President Trump is right that Venezuela is now a large supplier of other illegal drugs, especially cocaine, but they come from countries like Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, which are the largest producers of the coca leaf in the world (the coca leaf is what cocaine is made from).
The world’s largest aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford. Pic: Reuters
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Venezuela, which borders Colombia, is largely a transit country to the Caribbean in the same way that Ecuador, which also borders Colombia, is a transit country to the Pacific.
Sailors work on a Venezuelan Navy patrol boat off the Caribbean coast. Pic: Reuters
Neither Venezuela nor Ecuador are significant drug producers.
The drugs enter Venezuela overland, primarily from Colombia, and then mainly leave the country from ports on the northern coast of the country – and these are the departure points of the boats the US government has recently targeted and destroyed, along with the crews on board.
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Hegseth: US forces strike ‘narco-terrorists’
President Trump claims these boats from Venezuela are heading to the United States, but in reality they are mainly heading to the nearby islands of Trinidad and Tobago, and from there they largely go to West Africa and Europe – mostly Spain and Portugal.
Drugs heading to America either pass through Mexico over the border into the US or are transported via the Pacific Ocean route through countries like Ecuador. In this instance, Venezuela isn’t involved.
Read more: Inside Pablo Escobar’s home city where drugs are readily available
It’s widely accepted the two most exported drugs from South America are cocaine and marijuana – and the volume of production is staggering.
But the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US says that synthetic opioids like fentanyl are responsible for most overdose deaths there – and fentanyl is not produced in South America, whatever the president says.
So one can only conclude he is either mistaken and misinformed, or he has another motive. I suspect it is the latter, and that regime change in Venezuela is top of the list.
Israel may have agreed to stop fighting in Gaza, but it is backing armed groups that plan to fight Hamas to the bitter end.
Sky News has confirmed for the first time that four anti-Hamas militias are all backed by Israel, and consider themselves part of a joint project to remove Hamas from power.
The groups are all operating from areas still under Israeli control, behind what’s been called the “yellow line” – the boundary for Israel Defence Forces (IDF) troop deployments established by the ceasefire agreement.
“We have an official project – me, [Yasser] Abu Shabab, [Rami] Halas, and [Ashraf] al Mansi,” says militia leader Hossam al Astal, speaking to Sky News from his base in southern Gaza.
Hossam al Astal spoke to Sky News from his base near Khan Younis
“We are all for ‘The New Gaza’. Soon we will achieve full control of the Gaza Strip and will gather under one umbrella.”
The footage below, shared with Sky News, shows troops from Hossam al Astal’s militia parading near its base.
We used the video to identify the location of the militia’s headquarters for the first time.
It is situated on a military road that runs along the yellow line, less than 700 metres from the nearest IDF outpost.
“I’m hearing the sound of tanks now while I’m speaking, perhaps they’re out on patrol or something, but I’m not worried,” says al Astal.
“They don’t engage us, and we don’t engage them […] We’ve agreed, through the coordinator, that this is a green zone, not to be targeted by shelling or gunfire.”
The New Gaza
This area, now a patchwork of rubble and military berms, was once a leafy suburb of Gaza’s second city, Khan Younis.
Al Astal says he grew up here, but was forced to flee in 2010 after being pursued by Hamas over his involvement in militant groups aligned with their rival, the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA).
He spent the next 11 years abroad, working for the PA’s security services in Egypt and Malaysia.
Two months after he returned to Gaza, he was accused of involvement in the 2018 assassination of a Hamas member in Malaysia and sentenced to death.
“When the war started, they left us locked up, hoping the Israelis would bomb the prison and rid them of us,” he says. “Two months later, we broke down the doors and escaped.”
Hossam al Astal poses with armed men from his militia in Khan Younis. Pic: Hossam Al Astal
He says that his weapons, mainly Kalashnikov rifles, are purchased from former Hamas fighters on the black market.
Ammunition and vehicles, on the other hand, are delivered through the Kerem Shalom border crossing after coordination with the Israeli military.
This is the same border crossing used by another militia leader, Yasser Abu Shabab.
Yasser Abu Shabab (right), in a photo uploaded to his social media account. Pic: TikTok
Sky News previously revealed that Abu Shabab’s militia was smuggling vehicles into Gaza with the help of the Israeli military and an Arab-Israeli car dealer.
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Meet the militia group opposing Hamas
Al Astal says he uses the same car dealer. One of his vehicles appears to have Hebrew writing on the side, which has been partially scratched out.
He says his militia also receives weekly deliveries of everyday items needed to support the civilians living at the camp.
“We currently provide basic medical and education support to roughly 30 families,” he says.
“Children can get apples and bananas, food and drink, chips and so on. By contrast, in the other area, in the tents, you find five-, 10- or even 15-year-olds surviving on little more than lentils and pasta.”
He says these supplies come in via weekly deliveries. In the video below, a cargo truck can be seen at the militia’s base.
A similar cargo truck can be seen in satellite imagery of the camp, taken on 14 October.
Sky News has also confirmed that the other two militias, which are operating in the north of Gaza, are receiving supplies from Israel.
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New videos suggest Israeli support for Gaza militia
The video below, filmed by a member of Ashraf al Mansi’s militia, shows a car loaded with supplies driving towards their base.
Sky News previously confirmed that this road leads either from an IDF outpost or from the Erez border crossing with Israel.
A member of the other militia operating in northern Gaza, which is led by Rami Halas, told Sky News that coordination with the IDF is done indirectly through the District Coordination Office.
It’s part of the Israeli defence ministry, but also includes officials from the PA – Palestine’s internationally recognised government, based in the West Bank.
This fits with what we were told by al Astal, by an Israeli soldier stationed at Kerem Shalom, and by a senior commander in Abu Shabab’s militia – that coordination with the military is managed indirectly, and that the PA plays a key role.
“I have people within my group who are still, to this day, employees of the Palestinian Authority,” says al Astal.
The PA did not respond to Sky’s questions, but has previously denied having any relationship to these militias.
“The Palestinian Authority can’t admit to having a direct relationship with us,” the militia leader says.
“It already has enough issues and doesn’t want to add to that burden. You know, if word got out that they had ties with militias or with the occupation forces, you can imagine how that would look.”
From top left clockwise: Yasser Abu Shabab, Ashraf al Mansi, Hossam al Astal and Rami Halas
Military coordination
Although he acknowledges working with Israel to secure supplies, al Astal denies he has ever coordinated military operations with the IDF.
Sky News previously reported that Israeli aircraft had intervened in two battles fought by Abu Shabab’s militia.
We asked Abu Shabab whether these were due to coordination, but did not receive a response.
Hamas accused al Astal’s militia group of direct military coordination after several of its fighters were killed when Israel intervened during a battle between the two groups on 3 October.
The footage below, published by the IDF, shows the strikes that day.
“I don’t control Israeli airstrikes,” al Astal says. “The Israelis simply saw armed Hamas military groups and struck them.”
In April, two months before he founded the militia, al Astal’s own tent was hit by an Israeli bomb. The strike killed his 22-year-old daughter, Nihad, who was seven months pregnant.
“People accuse me of collaboration,” he says. “How can anyone speak about me like that? Were the Israelis ‘joking around’ with me with a missile?”
He believes the strike was intended for a Hamas member living nearby.
“If I listed every crime against children and women, the blame wouldn’t rest on Israel but on Hamas, which hid among the people.”
Support from outside powers
Multiple sources also told Sky News that the militias are also receiving support from outside powers.
The deputy leader of Abu Shabab’s militia, Ghassan al Duhine, has twice been photographed next to a vehicle with a UAE-registered licence plate.
Ghassan al Duhine poses in front of a car with a UAE licence plate, which is incompletely obscured. Pic: TikTok
Sky News also found that the logo of the group’s armed wing, the Counter Terrorism Service, is almost identical to that used by a UAE-backed militia of the same name operating in Yemen.
The logo used by al Astal’s militia, the Counter Terrorism Strike Force, similarly uses the same illustration as that used by a different UAE-backed militia, also based in Yemen.
The UAE did not respond to Sky’s request for comment.
When we asked al Astal whether he enjoyed the backing of the UAE, he smiled.
“God willing, in time everything will become clear,” he said. “But yes, there are Arab countries that support our project.”
That project, al Astal says, has a name: The New Gaza.
‘No war… no Hamas, no terrorism’
“Very soon, God willing, you will see this for yourselves; we will become the new administration of Gaza. Our project is ‘The New Gaza’. No war, at peace with everyone – no Hamas, no terrorism.”
Two days after Sky News spoke to al Astal, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, used the phrase himself while suggesting that Gaza could be split indefinitely along the yellow line.
“No reconstruction funds will be going into areas that Hamas still controls,” Kushner told reporters on Wednesday.
“There are considerations happening now in the area that the IDF controls, as long as that can be secured, to start the construction as a ‘New Gaza’ in order to give Palestinians living in Gaza a place to go, a place to get jobs.”
The IDF declined to comment on these findings. Hamas, the PA and the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the Israeli agency which manages the Israel-Gaza border, did not respond to our requests for comment.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
The US has announced it is sending an aircraft carrier to the waters off South America as it ramps up an operation to target alleged drug smuggling boats.
The Pentagon said in a statement that the USS Gerald R Ford would be deployed to the region, including the Caribbean Sea, to “bolster US capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland and our security in the Western Hemisphere”.
The vessel is the US Navy’s largest aircraft carrier. It is currently deployed in the Mediterranean alongside three destroyers, and the group are expected to take around one week to make the journey.
There are already eight US Navy ships in the central and South American region, along with a nuclear-powered submarine, adding up to about 6,000 sailors and marines, according to officials.
It came as the US secretary of war claimed that six “narco-terrorists” had been killed in a strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean Sea overnight.
A still from footage purporting to show the boat seconds before the airstrike, posted by US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on X
Pete Hegseth said his military had bombed a vessel which he claimed was operated by Tren de Aragua – a Venezuelan gang designated a terror group by Washington in February.
Writing on X, he claimed that the boat was involved in “illicit narcotics smuggling” and was transiting along a “known narco-trafficking route” when it was struck during the night.
All six men on board the boat, which was in international waters, were killed and no US forces were harmed, he said.
Ten vessels have now been bombed in recent weeks, killing more than 40 people.
Mr Hegseth added: “If you are a narco-terrorist smuggling drugs in our hemisphere, we will treat you like we treat al Qaeda. Day or NIGHT, we will map your networks, track your people, hunt you down, and kill you.”
While he did not provide any evidence that the vessel was carrying drugs, he did share a 20-second video that appeared to show a boat being hit by a projectile before exploding.
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Footage of a previous US strike on a suspected drugs boat earlier this week
Speaking during a White House news conference last week, Donald Trump argued that the campaign would help tackle the US’s opioid crisis.
“Every boat that we knock out, we save 25,000 American lives. So every time you see a boat, and you feel badly you say, ‘Wow, that’s rough’. It is rough, but if you lose three people and save 25,000 people,” he said.
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On Thursday, appearing at a press conference with Mr Hegseth, Mr Trump said that it was necessary to kill the alleged smugglers, because if they were arrested they would only return to transport drugs “again and again and again”.
“They don’t fear that, they have no fear,” he told reporters.
The attacks at sea would soon be followed by operations on land against drug smuggling cartels, Mr Trump claimed.
“We’re going to kill them,” he added. “They’re going to be, like, dead.”
Some Democratic politicians have expressed concerns that the strikes risk dragging the US into a war with Venezuela because of their proximity to the South American country’s coast.
Others have condemned the attacks as extrajudicial killings that would not stand up in a court of law.
Jim Himes, a member of the House of Representatives, told CBS News earlier this month: “They are illegal killings because the notion that the United States – and this is what the administration says is their justification – is involved in an armed conflict with any drug dealers, any Venezuelan drug dealers, is ludicrous.”
He claimed that Congress had been told “nothing” about who was on the boats and how they were identified as a threat.
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