Inside Gaza Witnesses Total Devastation After Two Years of War

Aside from the distant shapes of buildings still standing inside Gaza City, there's almost nothing left to guide you or identify the neighborhoods where thousands once lived.

 This was one of the first areas Israeli troops entered in the early weeks of the war. Since then, they've returned several times, as Hamas regroups around its strongholds in the area.

Israel does not allow news organizations to report freely from Gaza. Today, a group of journalists, including the BBC, were taken by the Israeli military into the occupied Strip.

 This brief visit was highly controlled and did not allow access to Palestinians or other areas of Gaza.

 In accordance with military censorship laws in Israel, our material was shown to military personnel before publication.

Asked about the level of destruction in the area we visited, Israeli military spokesman Nadav Shoshani said it was "not a goal".

 "The goal is to combat terrorists. Almost every house had a tunnel shaft or was booby-trapped or had an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] or sniper station," he said.

 "If you're driving fast, within a minute you can be inside of a living room of an Israeli grandmother or child. That's what happened on October 7."

 More than 1,100 people were killed in the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023, and 251 others taken hostage.

 Since then, more than 68,000 Gazans have been killed, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry there.

 The bodies of several hostages had been found in this area, Lt Col Shoshani said, including that of Itay Chen, returned to Israel by Hamas this week. Searches are continuing for the missing bodies of another seven hostages.

 The Israeli military base we travelled to is a few hundred metres from the yellow line – the temporary boundary set out in US President Donald Trump's peace plan, which divides the areas of Gaza still controlled by Israeli forces from the areas controlled by Hamas.

 Israel's army has been gradually marking out the yellow line with blocks on the ground, as a warning to both Hamas fighters and civilians.

 There are no demarcations along this part of the line yet - a soldier points it out to me, taking bearings from a small patch of sand between the grey crumbs of demolished buildings.