SATELLITE IMAGES REVEAL GAZA CARNAGE
About 60 per cent of all the buildings in Gaza have been damaged in the past six months, according to analysis of Chinese satellite images presented at a space conference.
The estimate is the first to come from China and examines the destruction in detail over time.
“Comparative analysis shows that as of March 2, 2024, 58.4 per cent of buildings and 34.1 per cent of farmland in the Gaza Strip were damaged,” Li Deren, a professor of remote sensing at Wuhan University, told the China Space Conference in Wuhan.
The estimate was based on comparison of observations by the university’s Luojia-3 and Dongfang Huiyan Gaofen01 satellites taken since October 17, before Israeli forces invaded the Gaza Strip.
Using advanced automated recognition algorithms, the satellites detected and assessed damage to various types of structures, including schools, universities, hospitals and places of worship. They then categorised the destruction.
Li said before November 10, 18.7 per cent of buildings in Gaza had been damaged. This increased to 32.6 per cent by November 29 and 56 per cent by January 22, before stabilising at 58.4 per cent by March. According to researchers at the City University of New York and Oregon State University, 55.9 per cent of buildings in Gaza, or about 160,800 structures, had been damaged or destroyed by Israeli bombings as of November 29.
The BBC reported on December 2 that about 100,000 buildings had been destroyed.
The Chinese researchers were also able to identify the location, size and number of missile craters over time, detecting a total of 3,747 craters in the Gaza region by March 2, while Gaza City sustained twice the damage compared to Deir al-Balah, on the strip’s central coast. At 365 sq km, the Gaza Strip is roughly the size of Nagasaki, the Japanese city targeted by a US atomic bomb in 1945.
The Chinese estimate helps fill in gaps in knowledge about the extent of damage in Gaza, with ground surveys not possible.