Newly circulated footage from northern Gaza shows the near-total destruction of Shujaiya, one of Hamas’ deepest and most entrenched strongholds positioned just minutes from the Israel-Gaza border. The video, filmed from within the vast rubble fields, features an Arabic-speaking narrator expressing disbelief as he walks along what he identifies as Wadi al-Araqis Street—a once-densely populated residential stretch now reduced to an unrecognizable wasteland.

The scenes highlight the scale of devastation inflicted during Israel’s third major incursion into Shujaiya since 2023, part of the renewed fighting that erupted after the January 2025 ceasefire collapsed two months later. Israeli forces reentered the district with the explicit objective of dismantling Hamas’ military infrastructure embedded deep within civilian neighborhoods. What remains, according to the footage, is a flattened expanse where more than 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed.

Shujaiya has long been regarded as one of Hamas’ core operational zones, housing tunnel networks, command posts, weapons depots, and forward positions used to launch attacks into Israel. Its proximity to the border made it a critical staging ground for Hamas operations and a central target for the IDF as the war resumed with full force this year.

The narrator in the footage struggles to identify any remaining landmarks as he moves through the wreckage, underscoring the intensity of the battles that raged across the district. Israeli strikes and ground operations have systematically targeted fortified positions, tunnel shafts, and defensive barricades, leaving behind a landscape reminiscent of a bombed-out frontline from a bygone era.

The renewed Shujaiya campaign reflects Israel’s determination to break Hamas’ entrenched military hold in northern Gaza, even as the fighting continues to reshape the district street by street. For many observers, the scale of destruction captured in the new footage offers a stark, unfiltered look at one of the war’s fiercest battlegrounds—an area where Hamas dug in deeply and paid a devastating price.