Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip

The Israeli Air Force conducted numerous concerted aerial bombardment campaigns on the Gaza Strip during the Gaza war until the enactment of a ceasefire in October 2025. Since then, a few limited strikes have still been carried out.

The bombing, combined with other simultaneous Israeli military actions in Gaza, killed at least 68,000 Palestinians (mostly civilians), which is between 3% and 4% of the total population of the territory, and damaged or destroyed Palestinian schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, and other civilian infrastructure including refugee camps.

Israel said the bombing was targeted, and by October 2024, Israel said it bombed 40,000 targets in the Gaza Strip. According to Israeli military intelligence members interviewed by the +972 Magazine, if a specific target was given to the air force to bomb, that target was usually a family home; they said the method of generating targets was that a list of persons considered likely to be militants was generated by software, and their family homes were chosen as targets.

By one estimate, as of April 2024 the bomb tonnage dropped on Gaza was more than 70,000 tonnes, surpassing the combined bomb tonnage dropped on Dresden, Hamburg, and London in World War II. Satellite imagery showed at least 69% of all buildings were damaged or destroyed, which surpasses the scale of destruction in Cologne and Dresden and approaches that of Hamburg during World War II. An analysis in The Lancet concluded that, as of January 2025, official figures significantly under-report mortality; the analysis estimated 64,260 deaths from traumatic injury up to 30 June 2024, and when extended to October 2024 likely exceeding 70,000. The recorded death toll, per the Gaza Health Ministry and as of October 2025, is over 72,000, not including those missing and presumed dead. Researchers have estimated the percentage of civilians among the fatalities at not less than 80%.

The aerial bombing and artillery shelling campaign has been accompanied or followed by destruction of infrastructure by other means. Areas including Rafah have been razed to the ground in a planned way, by means of controlled demolitions and bulldozing.

Israel has faced accusations of war crimes and genocide due to the large number of civilian casualties and the large percentage of civilian infrastructure destroyed. Israel ordered civilians evacuate, and threatened that civilians who didn't evacuate would be considered "an accomplice in a terrorist organisation". Israel stated that its struck targets were used by Hamas, but an Airwars analysis did not find evidence of militant presence in most Israeli airstrikes during Oct 2023. The United Nations reports that 86% of the Gaza Strip is under Israeli evacuation orders. Satellite data analysis indicates that 80% of the buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed.