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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.

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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.

Duaa, her mother and siblings look at photos from before the war
Image:
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.”

The Eman Ismail Zweidi's family's tents are in the western part of the Rafah camp. Pic: Planet Labs PBC
Image:
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
Image:
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
Image:
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.

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‘At least 798 killed’ at Gaza aid points – as medical charity warns acute malnutrition at all-time high

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'At least 798 killed' at Gaza aid points - as medical charity warns acute malnutrition at all-time high

At least 798 people in Gaza have reportedly been killed while receiving aid in the past six weeks – while acute malnutrition is said to have reached an all-time high.

The UN human rights office said 615 of the deaths – between 27 May and 7 July – were “in the vicinity” of sites run by the controversial US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

A further 183 people killed were “presumably on the route of aid convoys,” said Ravina Shamdasani, from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Its figures are based on a range of sources, including hospitals, cemeteries, and families in the Gaza Strip, as well as non-governmental organisations (NGOs), its partners on the ground, and Hamas-run health authorities.

Aid agency Project Hope said on Thursday that 10 children were among at least 15 people killed as they waited for its clinic in Deir al Balah to open.

Omar Meshmesh carries the body of his three-year-old niece Aya - one of the victims of the clinic attack. Pic: AP
Image:
Ten children were reportedly killed when Israel attacked near a clinic on Thursday. Pic: AP

The GHF has claimed the UN figures are “false and misleading” and has repeatedly denied any violence at or around its sites.

Meanwhile, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) – also known as Doctors Without Borders – said two of its sites were seeing their worst-ever levels of severe malnutrition.

Cases at its Gaza City clinic are said to have tripled from 293 in May to 983 in early July.

“Over 700 pregnant or breastfeeding women and nearly 500 children are now receiving emergency nutritional care,” MSF said.

The humanitarian medical charity said food prices were at extreme levels, with sugar at $766 (£567) per kilo and flour $30 (£22) per kilo, and many families surviving on one meal of rice or lentils a day.

It’s a major concern for the estimated 55,000 pregnant women in Gaza, who risk miscarriage, stillbirth and malnourished infants because of the shortages.

The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, after Israel eased its 11-week blockade of aid into the coastal territory.

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US aid contractors claim live ammo fired at Palestinians

It has four distribution centres, three of which are in the southern Gaza Strip.

The sites, kept off-limits to independent media, are guarded by private security contractors and located in zones where the Israeli military operates.

Palestinian witnesses say Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire towards crowds of people going to receive aid.

The Israeli military says it has fired warning shots at people who have behaved in what it says is a suspicious manner.

It says its forces operate near the aid sites to stop supplies from falling into the hands of militants.

Read more:
GHF aid distribution linked to increased deaths
Gaza situation ‘apocalyptic’, says UN expert

After the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians trying to reach the aid hubs, the United Nations has called the GHF’s aid model “inherently unsafe” and a violation of humanitarian impartiality standards.

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In response, a GHF spokesperson said: “The fact is the most deadly attacks on aid sites have been linked to UN convoys.”

The GHF says it has delivered more than 70 million meals to Gazans in five weeks and claims other humanitarian groups had “nearly all of their aid looted” by Hamas or criminal gangs.

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At least 798 people have been killed at Gaza aid points, the UN says

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'At least 798 killed' at Gaza aid points - as medical charity warns acute malnutrition at all-time high

At least 798 people in Gaza have been killed while receiving aid in six weeks, the UN human rights office has said.

A spokesperson for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said 615 of the killings were “in the vicinity” of sites run by the controversial US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

A further 183 people killed were “presumably on the route of aid convoys,” Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva.

The office said its figures are based on numbers from a range of sources, including hospitals, cemeteries and families in the Gaza Strip, as well as NGOs, its partners on the ground and the Hamas-run health authorities.

The GHF has claimed the figures are “false and misleading”. It has repeatedly denied there has been any violence at or around its sites.

The organisation began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, after Israel eased its 11-week blockade of aid into the enclave.

It has four distribution centres, three of which are in the southern Gaza Strip. The sites, kept off-limits to independent media, are guarded by private security contractors and located in zones where the Israeli military operates.

Palestinian witnesses say Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire towards crowds of people going to receive aid.

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US aid contractors claim live ammo fired at Palestinians

The Israeli military says it has fired warning shots at people who have behaved in what they say is a suspicious manner.

It says its forces operate near the aid sites to stop supplies falling into the hands of militants.

Read more:
GHF aid distribution linked to increased deaths
Gaza situation ‘apocalyptic’, says UN expert

After the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians trying to reach the aid hubs, the United Nations has called the GHF’s aid model “inherently unsafe” and a violation of humanitarian impartiality standards.

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Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday

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In response, a GHF spokesperson told the Reuters news agency: “The fact is the most deadly attacks on aid sites have been linked to UN convoys.”

The GHF says it has delivered more than 70 million meals to Gazans in five weeks and claims other humanitarian groups had “nearly all of their aid looted” by Hamas or criminal gangs.

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Ten children among at least 15 killed waiting for Gaza health clinic to open, says aid group

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Ten children among at least 15 killed waiting for Gaza health clinic to open, says aid group

Ten children and two women are among at least 15 killed in an airstrike near a Gaza health clinic, according to an aid organisation.

Project Hope said it happened this morning near Altayara Junction, in Deir al Balah, as patients waited for the clinic to open.

The organisation’s president called it a “blatant violation of international humanitarian law, and a stark reminder that no one and no place is safe in Gaza“.

“No child waiting for food and medicine should face the risk of being bombed,” added the group’s project manager, Dr Mithqal Abutaha.

“It was a horrific scene. People had to come seeking health and support, instead they faced death.”

Operations at the clinic – which provides a range of health and maternity services – have been suspended.

Some of the children were reportedly waiting to receive nutritional supplements, necessary due to the dire shortage of food being allowed into Gaza.

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Israel‘s military is investigating and said it was targeting a militant who took part in the 7 October terror attack.

“The IDF [Israel Defence Force] regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and operates to minimize harm as much as possible,” added.

The deaths come as an agreement over a 60-day truce hangs in the balance – with President Trump cautiously saying it could happen “this week, or next week”.

Elsewhere in Gaza, the Nasser Hospital reported another 21 deaths in airstrikes in Khan Younis and in the nearby coastal area of Muwasi.

It said three children and their mother were among the dead.

Israel said its troops have been dismantling more than 130 Hamas infrastructure sites in Khan Younis over the past week, including missile launch sites, weapons storage facilities and a 500m tunnel.

On Wednesday, a soldier was shot dead when militants burst out of a tunnel and tried to abduct him, the military added.

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Eighteen soldiers have been killed in the past three weeks – one of the deadliest periods for the Israeli army in months.

A 22-year-old Israeli man was also killed on Thursday by two attackers in a supermarket in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said the Magen David Adom emergency service.

People on site reportedly shot and killed the attackers but information on their identity has so far not been released.

Read more:
IDF chief says conditions ‘created’ for Gaza ceasefire
What is the possible Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal ?

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Lack of food and water ‘lethal’ for Gaza children

Negotiations over a proposed 60-day ceasefire are ongoing and President Trump reportedly put “heavy” pressure on Israel’s leader, who visited the US this week.

A major sticking point is said to be the status of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) inside Gaza during the 60-day ceasefire and beyond, should it last longer.

However, Sky News understands the Israeli government thinks the chances of a permanent truce are “questionable”.

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More than 57,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war – more than half are women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health ministry.

Its figure does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

The war began in October 2023 after Hamas killed around 1,200 people in Israel and kidnapped 251 others.

Some of them remain In Gaza and are a crucial part of ceasefire negotiations, which also include a planned surge in humanitarian aid into the strip.

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