The Israel-Hamas war has devastated the Gaza Strip over the past two years.

Associated Press footage before and during the war offer some sense of the destruction in the coastal territory.

Israeli bombardment and ground operations have turned entire neighborhoods in several cities into rubble-strewn wastelands, with blackened shells of buildings and mounds of debris stretching away in all directions.

Major roads have been plowed up. Critical water and electricity infrastructure is in ruins. Most hospitals no longer function.

Areas like the southern city of Rafah and the northern towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya have been devastated and deserted with most of Gaza’s more than 2 million people squeezing in a narrow strip of land in the southern part of the strip.

Gaza is a strip of land along the Mediterranean Sea covering about 360 square kilometers (139 square miles).

Palestinians hope Gaza will be part of a future state, along with the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

The war started when the Hamas led attack in Southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 251.

Most of them were released during ceasefires, 48 are still in captivity in Gaza, and Israel believes only 20 are alive.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 67,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government. Its figures are seen by the U.N. and many independent experts as the most reliable estimate of wartime casualties.