'Jabaliya is like hell' How airstrikes reduced a refugee camp to rubble

On the morning of 9 October 2023, the Trans area of the open market in Jabaliya refugee camp was bustling.

- Peter Beaumont, Malak A Tantesh, Gaza, Kaamil Ahmed

On the morning of 9 October 2023, the Trans area of the open market in Jabaliya refugee camp was bustling. Two days into the Gaza war triggered by Hamas's surprise attack in Israel, it had yet to be hit by Israeli jets.

The camp, just north of the city of the same name, was established in 1948. Though technically still a refugee camp, in the ensuing decades it had become largely indistinguishable from the rest of northern Gaza's urban sprawl - densely populated, vibrant and busy. As well as the large open market at its centre, there were restaurants and schools, two football teams, bakeries and clinics.

But between 10.30am and 11.30am on 9 October last year, five Israeli airstrikes tore through the market, killing dozens of people, in the opening salvoes of a devastating Israeli campaign, conducted in three waves, that has left the camp an unrecognisable wasteland of rubble.

'We were starving and without food'

The first offensive: October 2023 - January 2024

Jabaliya was pummelled with airstrikes in the first months of the war. The deadliest, on 31 October, killed scores of people and left large craters in the ground at a busy junction.