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.
Ukrainian soldiers encircled by Russian forces in the key eastern city of Pokrovsk have started surrendering, the defence ministry in Moscow claims.
But Ukraine‘s military has pushed back on the report by the TASS state news agency, saying the situation is “difficult and dynamic”.
Kyiv has also claimed its positions in some districts of Pokrovsk have improved despite its city being infiltrated by Russian troops.
Latest: Russian attacks are ‘nuclear terrorism’, Ukraine warns
Ukraine is increasing its number of assault troops in the area, the 7th Rapid Response Corps said on Facebook.
And Ukrainian troops are also working to cut Moscow’s military logistics routes, it added.
The Russian defence ministry also said its forces defeated a team of Ukrainian special forces that headed to Pokrovsk in a bid to prevent Russian forces from advancing further into the city.
‘Footage of Ukrainian troops after surrendering’
It later posted videos of two Ukrainian troops who, it claimed, had surrendered.
The footage showed the men, one dressed in fatigues and the other in a dark green jacket, sat against a wall in a dark room, as they spoke of fierce fighting and encirclement by Russian forces.
The videos’ authenticity could not be independently verified, and there was no immediate public comment from Kyiv on the Russian ministry’s claims.
Ukrainian police officers on patrol in Pokrovsk. File pic: Reuters
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has previously acknowledged that some Russian units had infiltrated the city. But he maintained that Ukraine is tackling them.
He said Russia had deployed 170,000 troops in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, where Pokrovsk is located, in a major offensive to capture the city and claim a big battlefield victory.
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Multiple Russian missiles strike Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia
‘Operation to destroy enemy forces’
Ukraine’s army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Saturday the situation in Pokrovsk remained “hardest” for Ukrainian forces, who were trying to push Russian troops out.
But he insisted there was no encirclement or blockade as Moscow has claimed.
“A comprehensive operation to destroy and push out enemy forces from Pokrovsk is ongoing. The main burden lies on the shoulders of the units of the armed forces of Ukraine, particularly UAV operators and assault units,” Mr Syrskyi said.
Read more:
Ukraine will work on ceasefire plan within next 10 days
24 hours in the kill zone
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Why is Ukraine attacking Moscow? What’s behind Putin’s nuclear test?
Why is Pokrovsk important?
One of Moscow’s key aims has been to take all of Ukraine’s industrial heartland of coal-rich Donbas, which comprises of the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces. Kyiv still controls about 10% of Donbas.
Capturing Pokrovsk, which Russian media has dubbed “the gateway to Donetsk”, and Kostiantynivka to its northeast, would give Moscow a platform to drive north towards the two biggest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in Donetsk – Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
‘Key Russian fuel pipeline struck’
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military intelligence, known as HUR, has said its forces have hit an important fuel pipeline in the Moscow region that supplies the Russian army.
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Dramatic drone rescue in Ukraine’s kill zone
In a statement on Telegram, HUR said the operation late on Friday was a “serious blow” to Russia’s military logistics.
HUR said its forces struck the Koltsevoy pipeline, which is 250 miles long and supplies the Russian army with gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from refineries in Ryazan, Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow.
The operation, which targeted infrastructure near Ramensky district, destroyed all three fuel lines, HUR said.
The pipeline was capable of transporting up to three million tonnes of jet fuel, 2.8 million tonnes of diesel and 1.6 million tonnes of gasoline annually, HUR said.
Russia ‘targets gas production site’
Also overnight, Russia launched an attack on a gas production site in Poltava, in central Ukraine.
A fire broke out, the local administration said, but no injuries were reported.
Kyiv condemns ‘nuclear terrorism’
Ukraine’s foreign ministry has condemned Russian strikes this week on substations powering some of its nuclear plants.
It accused Russia of carrying out “targeted strikes on such substations” which “bear the hallmarks of nuclear terrorism”.
Elsewhere, a civilian died and 15 more were injured on Saturday morning after Russia struck the Mykolaiv region in southern Ukraine with a ballistic Iskander missile, local official Vitaliy Kim said.
A child was among those hurt in the strike, he added.
World
‘We have no food, no water… it feels like the wilderness’: The communities shredded and still stranded by Hurricane Melissa
The death toll in Jamaica after Hurricane Melissa could rise, with certain communities still marooned from the rest of the island, according to the police chief for the worst-affected area.
Coleridge Minto, superintendent of police for St Elizabeth Parish, told Sky News that his area has recorded six deaths directly related to the hurricane.
“We are hoping there is no more,” he said. “The reality is we have not yet communicated with all our station commanders in some of the other areas and so as soon as we have those reports, we could be hearing of other injuries, other situations that we were not privy to at this moment.”
The UK has pledged a total of £7.5m to assist the Caribbean’s recovery from the hurricane. Aid flights have been arriving over the past couple of days into Jamaica’s two international airports, but it’s not getting to where they need it the most.
Black River has been described as ground zero after Hurricane Melissa swept through it
In the town of Middle Quarters, close to where the hurricane made landfall, Vivienne Bennett is sitting, propped up against a house without a roof. Her right hand is wrapped in a kitchen towel. “I lost my finger in the hurricane,” she says, showing me her finger which is exposed to the bone. “I opened the door of my house to try and escape, and the wind slammed it back and cut my finger off.”
She asks me for painkillers and says she doesn’t have any medication to stave off infection. I ask if she has seen any government aid. “No,” she replies, “we haven’t seen anybody yet, so we’re trying to get some help. I need to get to a hospital but I don’t know how because all the roads are blocked.”
The situation is growing more dire by the day
Her daughter, Leila, has a baby and other children are playing nearby. “We have no nappies, we have no food, we have no water,” Leila says, “it feels like the wilderness here now.”
The road leading to Black River, the town authorities are referring to as “ground zero” for this disaster, is difficult to pass, but not impossible. A journey from the capital, Kingston, that would usually take two hours, now takes six. We drive through murky floodwater, a couple of feet deep, and through an avenue of twisted bamboo stalks.
On arrival, it’s a desperate scene. People here seem almost shell-shocked, still processing what has happened to them, unsure what to do next. One man walks past our cameraman and holds his hands in the air. “Jamaica needs help,” he says, “it’s been mashed up.” I ask what help he needs. “We need houses, food and water,” he replies.
Black River was once a wealthy town, the first in Jamaica to have electricity. But the storm has laid waste to the main street. The 300-year-old church, the seafront restaurant, the pharmacy, the Chinese supermarket, the whole town has been shredded.
A group of people sit at a bus stop on the seafront surrounded by huge rocks washed up by a 16-foot storm surge. “It’s a disaster, a disaster,” one woman calls out to me.
With communications still down across most of the island, people here have been unable to contact friends and family for five days now.
Black River has been described as ground zero after Hurricane Melissa swept through it
A woman called Inkiru Bernard, who is Jamaican but lives in New York, has been in touch with our team and asked us to try to find her 67-year-old mother, who lives in Black River. She’s not heard from her since the storm.
When we arrive at the address she provides, her mother, Inez McRae, is sitting on the porch. She shows me around what remains of the house where she weathers the storm. The roof is entirely gone, everything is sodden and thick with mud.
“But I’m alive,” she says, “I’ve been spared.” When Inkiru finally sees her mother on a video call, she cries with relief. “Oh mummy,” she says, “I’ve been so worried.”
Ms McRae is thankful of having ‘been spared’
Tanks have been positioned on the main street in Black River and soldiers patrol it after shops and businesses were looted.
The police chief for this area, Coleridge Minto, says he understands the desperation but is urging people to be patient.
“We can appreciate that persons are trying to grab things,” he says, “persons are devastated, but we want to ensure that we maintain law.”
Army helicopters were flying over the disaster zone and some aid is now arriving into Black River. But with other villages still largely cut off from the rest of the island, this situation is growing more dire by the day.
Driving through western Jamaica, it’s staggering how wide Hurricane Melissa’s field of destruction is.
Town after town, miles apart, where trees have been uprooted and roofs peeled back.
Some homes are now just a pile of rubble, and we still don’t know how deadly this storm has been, although authorities warn the death toll will likely rise.
A total of 49 people have died in Melissa’s charge across the Caribbean – 19 in Jamaica alone.
Roads are still flooded in Jamaica
The storm has blown over telephone poles, which are blocking the roads
My team and I headed from Kingston airport, towards where the hurricane made landfall, referred to as “ground zero” of this crisis.
On the way, it’s clear that so many communities here have been brought to their knees and so many people are desperate for help.
We drive under a snarl of mangled power lines and over huge piles of rocks before reaching the town of Lacovia in Saint Elizabeth Parish.
The hurricane stripped the entire roof off this church
Many children live in homes with caved-in roofs
At the side of the road, beside a battered and sodden primary school, a woman wearing a red shirt and black tracksuit bottoms holds a handwritten sign in the direction of passing cars.
“Help needed at this shelter,” it says. The woman’s name is Sheree McLeod, and she is an admin assistant at the school.
She is in charge of a makeshift shelter in the school, a temporary home for at least 16 people between the ages of 14 and 86.
I stop and ask what she needs and almost immediately she begins to cry.
The primary school that has been housing those with no other place to stay
‘No emergency teams’
“I’ve never seen this in my entire life,” she says. “It’s heartbreaking, I never thought in a million years that I would be in the situation trying to get help and with literally no communication.
“We can’t reach any officials, there are no emergency teams. I’m hoping and praying that help can reach us soon.
“The task of a shelter manager is voluntary and the most I can do is just ask for help in whatever way possible.”
Read more:
Before and after images show hurricane’s destruction
What we know from the ground following the devastation
Sheree McLeod pleads for help for those sheltering at the school
At least 16 people currently live at the school, which is being used as a temporary shelter
Sheree shows me the classroom where she and 15 other people rode out the hurricane which she says hung over the town for hours.
They had just a sheet of tarpaulin against the window shutters to try to repel gusts of more than 170mph and a deluge of rain.
They took a white board off the wall to try to get more shelter.
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Hurricane Melissa was ‘traumatising’
“It was very terrible,” Sheree says. “We were given eight blankets for the shelter and that was it, but there were 16 people.
“Now all their clothes and blankets that they were provided with got damaged. Some people are sleeping in chairs and on wooden desks.”
Her plea for help is echoed across this part of Jamaica.
Toppled-over chairs and rubbish line a classroom in the school
The water tank at the school has run out
As we’re filming a pile of wooden slats that used to be a house, a passing motorcyclist shouts: “Send help, Jamaica needs help now.”
The relief effort is intensifying. After I leave Sheree, a convoy of army vehicles speed past in the direction of Black River, the town at the epicentre of this disaster.
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Diggers work to clear debris from the road late into the night. Ambulance sirens also grow more regular as the day goes on.
Help is coming and for many here, it can’t come soon enough.
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