gaza obliteration
The obliteration of Gaza from relentless Israeli air strikes and tank shelling was laid bare today in a series of satellite images charting the escalating violence across the region.

Analysis from UN satellite experts reveal how hundreds of buildings have been razed to the ground in a series of attacks that have killed more than 1,300 Palestinians over the last three weeks.

Using images from July 6 - before the conflict began - and comparing them with ones from July 25, they have identified 700 destroyed structures, many of them homes and mosques.

gaza razed
They also counted 316 severely damaged buildings and 102 others that were moderately damaged.

In addition, the team from the UN's Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) picked out at least 404 craters on roads and in agricultural areas across the Gaza Strip including Gaza City, Toffah, Nahal Qatif and Beit Haum.

In the latest assaults launched today at least 76 people died in Israeli strikes across Gaza, including a UN school, sending the Palestinian toll from 23 days of fighting above 1,300.

The deadliest strike was at a UN-run school in Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, where 16 people were killed and scores were wounded when two shells slammed into the facility, drawing a furious denunciation from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

In another strike on a house in Tuffah neighbourhood in northeastern Gaza City, seven members of the same family were killed, among them four children and a woman, emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said.

In the southern city of Khan Yunis, a single strike killed nine members of the same family, including a child, Qudra said, and in a later incident, seven members of another family also died as Israeli tank shelling struck the city.

Later in the day, medics pulled the bodies of another seven people from the rubble of a house in Khan Yunis, also from the same family.

In another shelling attack in Gaza City, an 11-year-old disabled girl was killed, and a 16-year-old girl died in a strike on central Gaza.

Another 28 people were killed in various attacks across the Gaza Strip as Israeli ground troops made a 'significant advance' into the tiny coastal territory which is home to 1.7 million people.