An estimated 55 percent of the buildings in the Khan Younis area – about 45,000 buildings – have been destroyed or damaged, according to Corey Scher of the City University of New York and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University, two mapping experts who used satellite imagery to track destruction.

The scenes in Khan Younis underscored what has been one of the world’s most destructive and lethal military assaults in recent decades, leaving most of the tiny coastal territory unlivable for its 2.3 million people.

It also portended what is likely to happen in Gaza’s southernmost town of Rafah, where half of Gaza’s uprooted population is now crowded, if Israel goes ahead with plans to invade it.