Documenting the Destruction in Gaza From the Sky

Filming Gaza from the sky has become one of the most dangerous things a journalist can do. Five drone journalists in Gaza have been killed and one injured by the Israeli military in the current war. ARIJ, Forbidden Stories and their partners documented that in every case but one, the attack took place shortly after capturing aerial images.

One of those journalists was Mahmoud Isleem Al-Basos, who was killed in an airstrike on March 15th. Al-Basos had been hired by Forbidden Stories to take drone footage for this story.

The Gaza Project is led by Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based organization committed to continuing the work of journalists who have been silenced. In that spirit, and in defiance of the idea that killing the journalist kills the story, the consortium set out to finish what some of Gaza’s drone journalists began.

According to the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT), 69 percent of structures in Gaza have been damaged. By June 2024, The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimated that the war generated 39 million tonnes of debris, that is more than 107 kilograms of debris for each square meter. As of March 2024, nearly 90 percent of school buildings have been damaged or destroyed.

The full scale of destruction in Gaza cannot be seen from the ground. In this part of the project, we document it from the sky.

Bellingcat, a partner on the Gaza Project, used photogrammetry, a technique that builds 3D reconstructions from images, to visualize destruction in areas where drone journalists had been killed or where it has become too dangerous to film.

While working on the project, al-Basos followed a clear protocol: flying his drone in repeated circles to photograph each location from as many angles as possible. The goal was to assemble those images into immersive 3D models of Al-Shati and Jabalia camps, a technique known as photogrammetry, used here for the first time in Gaza since the start of the war.

“It's really a unique way of looking at the terrain,” said geolocation and satellite imagery specialist for Bellingcat Jake Godin. “It's simpler to look at Gaza from satellite imagery, because drone footage isn’t easy to come by. But when you can get it, it gives a much higher level of detail.”

“Satellite images can cover a large area, but they’re sometimes hard to interpret. Ground-level footage provides the best insight into what people on the ground are experiencing but does not offer an overall view of the area," explains Thomas Bordeaux, a volunteer with Bellingcat's Global Authentication Project and a specialist in 3D modeling. "These 3D models, like the drone images they are derived from, are so powerful because they do both.”

Source : Forbidden Stories/Mahmoud al-Basos. Photogrammetry model : Bellingcat/Thomas Bordeaux.

This investigation was completed with support from ARIJ