Khan Younis is a devastated city with lost residents

Amidst the rubble of collapsed homes and the ruins of streets that teemed with life just two years ago, hundreds of thousands of displaced people from Khan Younis Governorate continue to live in uncertainty, unable to return to their homes despite the ceasefire entering its third week.

Khan Younis, located in the southern Gaza Strip, covers an area of ​​109 square kilometers, representing about a third of the Strip’s total area, and is home to more than half a million people. Today, the city resembles a shadow of its former self, its neighborhoods transformed into desolate corridors where devastation stands as silent witnesses to a war that left nothing untouched.

The city is no longer the same as it was before the two successive invasions. While the destruction after the first invasion (December 2023 – April 2024) reached approximately 60%, the second invasion (May – October 2025) completed the devastation, completely obliterating the eastern, northern, and southern neighborhoods of the city.

In its latest invasion, the occupying army adopted a policy of demolishing entire residential blocks using car bombs, unlike the first invasion, which relied on aerial bombardment and the individual demolition of houses. The charred remains of those vehicles still litter the streets, bearing witness to the devastating way in which the city was stripped of its character.