Al Jazeera’s Sanad verification agency has identified the locations of at least 954 documented shelters established across the Gaza Strip over the past two years, based on information from local and international groups it runs.
Most of these shelters (65% or 624 sites) were temporary camps, often built using pieces of tin, cloth or nylon.
While another 282 shelters were located inside schools and buildings that had been reused, 14 were in hospitals, and 34 were in other facilities such as community centers, mosques, municipal buildings, and warehouses.
Several families are crammed into one tent or classroom inside a school, without enough furniture to sleep, sit, eat, cook, or maintain a minimum of privacy. People struggle to survive without clean water, essential medicines or adequate food.
Half of the shelters were evacuated, destroyed or attacked
Over the past two years, Israel has attacked 447 Gaza shelters, destroying, damaging or forcing them to close.
Analysis of satellite images of these sites showed the following:
– Deir al-Balah included 282 shelters, 93% of which (262) are still operating, and 20 shelters are idle.
Khan Yunis included 281 shelters, more than half of which (151) were inoperable, especially those close to settlement lands.
– Gaza City included 179 shelters, of which 41% (73) were inoperable.
– Rafah includes 114 shelters, with a staggering 93% (106) that are not functioning.
– North Gaza includes 98 shelters, of which 97 shelters are no longer operating.
One in every 4 Israeli attacks targeted shelters, displacement centers, or camps for internally displaced people, out of a total of at least 20,000 attacks recorded in Gaza, according to the “Armed Conflict Location and Event Data” (ACLED).
Between October 7, 2023 and September 19, 2025, Israel killed 22,402 displaced people in 4,900 such attacks, which means that about 39% of all people killed by Israel in Gaza in that period were killed in displacement shelters.