One year ago, Gaza became a battlefield as Israel began a military offensive to root out Hamas in response to the Oct 7. Hamas-led attacks. The war has left Gaza unrecognizable. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, and almost everyone living there has been displaced — many of them multiple times.

Nearly 60 percent of buildings have been damaged or destroyed in the besieged enclave, an area about half the size of New York City. Videos and images from before and after the war started in some of the hardest hit areas — including Khan Younis, Gaza City and Jabaliya — reveal the magnitude of ruin across the strip.

Israel says its goal was to eradicate Hamas and destroy the tunnel network it built below ground. But in that attempt, it laid waste to an area that is home to some two million people.

In Gaza’s south is the governorate of Khan Younis, stretching from its eponymous medieval city, where the citadel wall stands as its historic anchor, to the lush fields that families have tilled for generations.

Now, the people of Khan Younis say they feel unmoored from time and place: The square where they played, prayed and gossiped is a ghost town. The farms that once nourished them have been bulldozed and pounded by Israeli artillery.

Israel says such strikes are necessary to attack Hamas militants and weapons hidden in hospitals, mosques, schools and other civilian areas. International law experts say Israel still has a responsibility to protect civilians even if Hamas exploits them.

Within the city of Khan Younis, only one citadel wall remains of its Mamluk-era fortress, ground away by centuries and wars past. It is the city’s lodestone.

That wall has lent its name to everything from the nearby marketplace to a space locals called “Citadel Square.” Here, vendors set up stalls to hawk goods and sugary concoctions and friends gathered around hookah pipes. A young oud player nicknamed Abu Kayan came during Eid holidays to strum Palestinian folk songs.

It was a humble outing even the most impoverished Gazan could enjoy, with a view of the citadel wall and the Grand Mosque on either side.

“What made it cool was that all kinds of people met there,” said Abu Kayan, 22, whose real name is Ahmed Abu-Hasaneen. “It was a place you could feel the spirit of our ancestors. It was a place we could hold on to and preserve.”

Now, the citadel wall looks out over a wasteland of rubble.

“I don’t think this place could be rebuilt,” said Abu Kayan. “Even if it could, nothing can replace the many friends I met there who have been killed, displaced, or fled abroad.”

Towering over the other side of the square was the 96-year-old Grand Mosque — the place to go for Friday prayers and staying up late into the night with family during the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan.

“That mosque was like the city’s address — the symbol of Khan Younis,” said Belal Barbakh, 25, who once volunteered to clean its carpets and perfume the halls before holidays.

That address no longer exists — Israel’s military said it struck the mosque to destroy Hamas infrastructure inside it, information The Times could not independently verify.

These days, Mr. Barbakh continues that ritual of cleaning and perfuming in the small plastic tent erected as a prayer hall at the foot of the pile of rubble that is all that remains of the Grand Mosque.

Beyond the mosque was the citadel’s commercial district, where playful hearts, young and old, sought out Hamada Ice Cream and the balloon-festooned Citadel of Toys.

Sisters Asan and Elan al-Farra, 16 and 14, remember birthday parties at Hamada, and the excitement they felt when their parents let them stop there after shopping.

Passing by what is left of Hamada now, Elan said, is like watching the color drained out of her childhood: “It’s depressing seeing a place that was so bright end up black, battered, and dirty.”

Just a few meters away are the pancaked floors of the building once home to the Barbakh brothers and their families — and their Citadel of Toys.

Abdulraouf Barbakh opened the toy store on the ground floor, indulging a childhood obsession with “any and all toys.”

During Eid celebrations, he welcomed a parade of children who marched in, clutching the holiday money their relatives had given them, eager to buy a long coveted doll, ball or water gun.

“I loved to see that smile of pure joy on children’s faces, especially for a people like ours that have suffered so much,” he said.

War has razed the Barbakh building to the ground, and the siblings and cousins who lived there are scattered.

Outside the remnants of their family building, Mr. Barbakh’s nieces and nephews sometimes linger, looking for signs of toys that survived beneath the ruins.

Mr. Barbakh cannot imagine going back to being a purveyor of joy to children.

“My only wish is to rescue my family from this war,” he said. “I have no plans to buy any more toys.”

The verdant Khuza’a region of Khan Younis, the breadbasket of southern Gaza, is land Jamal Subuh’s family has plowed for over a century. His children still remember their first time helping their father with the harvest, and the taste of the melons, tomatoes and peas they had picked fresh off the vine.

Mr. Subuh shared an image of what his cropland looked like before the war.

Gaza’s farmlands represented a rare source of self-sufficiency in an area that has endured a decades-long blockade by Israel and Egypt.

“From generation to generation, we handed down a love of farming this land,” said Mr. Subuh, who was ordered off his property by Israeli military officials. “We eat from it, make money from it and feed the rest of our people from it.”

For Mr. Subuh, his fields were a chance to leave the next generation better off than his own: Each year, he farmed more lands, to pay for his son’s veterinary school and his daughter’s agricultural engineering degree.

He estimates that miles upon miles of fields have been bulldozed, his crops crushed. Advancing Israeli troops destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of tractors, water pumps and other equipment. The image provided here is the closest Mr. Subuh has been able to get to his land since the war began.

According to the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization, some 41 percent of the Gaza Strip is cropland. Of that land, it said some 68 percent has been damaged.

After decades of nourishing Gazans, the Subuh family now relies on humanitarian handouts at a displacement camp in central Gaza.

Mr. Subuh expects it would take years to extricate all the unexploded ordinances, replow his fields and ensure the earth is clean of toxic substances that may have seeped into the ground.

Sometimes he regrets not giving up farming sooner, like many Gazan farmers had in previous wars. Yet he mourns the potential end of his farm.

“I had a relationship with that land,” he said. “We had a history together, and I am heartbroken.”

Still, his daughter, Dina, refuses to give up: “I won’t lose my will to plant and care for this land again.”

Gaza City, the strip’s capital, is home to the ancient Old City, as well as Al-Rimal, a once-vibrant, upper-middle-class neighborhood. The war has torn through the area’s cultural and religious landmarks, including the oldest mosque in Gaza.

Al-Omari Mosque, wrecked by the war, was the heart of the Old City. It had been a place of worship for thousands of years — evolving as the area’s rulers changed. The ruins of a Roman temple became the site of a Christian Byzantine church in the fifth century, then was repurposed into a mosque in the seventh century.

For Gazans, the unusual architecture of the mosque set it apart from other Muslim houses of worship.

In December, the mosque was all but destroyed in an airstrike by the Israeli military, which said the site had become a command center for Hamas, information that The Times could not independently verify. The strike toppled much of the mosque’s minaret and ruined most of its stone structure — including walls with carved Arabic inscriptions.

Ahmed Abu Sultan used to spend the last 10 days of Ramadan worshiping, sleeping and eating in Al-Omari Mosque. For him, the mosque had spiritual echoes of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a sacred site for Muslims.

“The atmosphere you feel in Jerusalem when you enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, you feel the same atmosphere when you enter the Al-Omari Mosque,” Mr. Abu Sultan said.

Seven months before the war began, he took two of his sons — then 8 and 9 years old — to spend a night at Al-Omari during Ramadan, with hopes of beginning an annual tradition. “I wanted to plant this connection in my children,” he said.

To mark another rite of passage, generations of Gazans have passed through the Gold Market abutting the mosque.

Riyad Al-Masri, 29, grew up seeing his brother and other older male relatives shop for jewelry for their brides in the tiny shops under the arched ceilings.

Mr. Al-Masri and his wife, who have been living apart because of the war, had shopped at the market soon after they became engaged in February 2023. Presenting the bride with gold jewelry is a long-standing tradition in Palestinian wedding culture.

“These rituals, we all went through them,” he said. “My older brother, my father, my grandfathers, we would get engaged and then go to the Gold Market with our fiancées and buy what they wanted.”

What remain are shuttered doors and piles of debris.

Al-Rimal was one of the first targets of Israeli airstrikes.

For decades, the neighborhood had been the center of commerce, trade, academia and entertainment in Gaza. On any given day, Gazans could be seen strolling through the Unknown Soldier Park, a welcome green space in the midst of a busy city.

Many Gazans who visited the park, along Omar Al-Mukhtar Street, could enjoy slushies in the summer or a warm custard drink in the winter from the nearby ice cream parlor, Qazim.

The park was a gathering place for rallies and protests. When past wars ended in a cease-fire deal, people celebrated there.

Now the park has been razed and bulldozed. The Palestine Bank tower, along with other buildings overlooking the square, has been gutted and damaged.

Not far away, the Rashaad Shawa center, which housed the oldest library in the Gaza Strip, has been severely damaged. The first cultural center in Gaza, it once stored the strip’s historical archives, passports and other documents of families who moved to the strip.

Among the businesses that made Al-Rimal a destination for Gazans was Shawerma Al-Sheikh, known for its single menu item. It, too, wasn’t spared by the war.

Opened in 1986 as a single meat spit, it had inspired restaurants from the north to the south. It was initially called “The People’s Cafeteria,” but it soon took on a different name after one of its owners, Ihsan Abdo, became known for dressing like “a sheikh” with a long robe and white turban.

Back in the 1950s, the neighborhood was mostly an empty, sandy expanse. Al-Rimal, which means sands in Arabic, was named for its terrain.

As nearby Gaza City areas began to get overcrowded, traders and businessmen started to buy land in Al-Rimal. There they built large homes and multistory buildings, bringing their trades with them into ground-floor shops and storefronts.

“These landmarks have memories and imprints in the heart of every person who came to Gaza,” said Husam Skeek, a community and tribal leader.

The town of Jabaliya in the north, which had a role in one of the most pivotal moments of modern Palestinian history, has now become a byword for Gaza’s destruction.

As descendants of Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes in 1948, many in Jabaliya say this war has evoked a sense of transgenerational trauma. Some describe it as reliving the “Nakba,” or catastrophe: The loss of land, community, and above all, home.

Nowhere has that loss felt as potent as in Al-Trans, the heart of Jabaliya’s social life and its history as a place to protest every power that has controlled Gaza — from Israel to Hamas.

Al-Trans is one of the areas that has been decimated by several Israeli incursions into Jabaliya, where the Israeli military repeatedly used 2,000-pound bombs.

Israel says Jabaliya is a stronghold for Hamas and other militants responsible for the Oct. 7 attacks. After a strike near Al-Trans last October, the Israeli military told The Times that it had destroyed a “military fighting compound” and a tunnel that had been used by Hamas. But locals describe the extent of the destruction as collective punishment.

Named after the first electricity transmitter erected in the area, Al-Trans intersection stood at the center of Jabaliya — figuratively and geographically. This is where people went to shop for groceries, get their hair done, meet friends — and, perhaps most significantly, to protest.

“Jabaliya, and Al-Trans specifically, was a place of change,” said Fatima Hussein, 37, a journalist from the town. “Whenever we have confronted a regime or oppressive force — no matter what that force was — the movement started here.”

In 1987, protests against Israeli occupation that started in Al-Trans set off the First Intifada. Locals rebelled against their own leaders, too: The 2019 “We Want to Live” protests took off from Al-Trans, voicing growing popular anger over repressive Hamas rule.

“Our creativity, our awareness, it was born out of suffering,” said Ahmed Jawda, 30, a protest organizer born in Jabaliya. “Suffering makes you insist on living life.”

That creativity was present in local businesses like the Nahed Al-Assali furniture store. In an enclave struggling with poverty, Al-Assali became hugely successful by offering bargain prices and pay by installment.

“The secret of our success was taking people into consideration,” said Wissam, Nahed’s brother and business partner. “We went easy on people, especially with the price.”

Al-Assali was where newlyweds furnished their new home, and pilgrims purchased prayer rugs. Now it is a pile of charred concrete.

Gone, too, is the Rabaa Market and Cafe, where friends lingered for hours to gossip, and activists planned their protests. So is Abu Eskander Cafe, the local nut roastery, and the Syrian Kitchen, a restaurant so popular that locals simply called it “The Syrian.”

The loss of the landmarks that mapped Gazans’ most cherished memories makes the notion of rebuilding seem impossible to many.

The war has no end in sight. Even if it were to stop today, the cost of rebuilding Gaza would be staggering.

In the first eight months alone, a U.N. preliminary assessment said, the war created 39 million tons of rubble, containing unexploded bombs, asbestos, other hazardous substances and even human remains. In May, a World Bank report estimated it could take 80 years to rebuild the homes that have been destroyed.

But for Gazans, neither time nor money can replace all that has been lost.

If the trauma of previous generations of Palestinians was displacement, Mr. Jawda said, it is now also the feeling of an identity being erased: “Destroying a place destroys a part of who you are.”

A Canadian woman accused of killing three people in a span of a few days in separate slayings has been arrested, authorities said this week before labeling her a serial killer. 

Sabrina Kauldhar, 30, was arrested at a hotel in Burlington, Ontario, after the slayings of a woman and two men in and around the Toronto area, the Niagara Regional Police Service said Friday.

“I think by definition she is a serial killer,” Niagara Regional Police Chief Bill Fordy told reporters at the news conference. “Two or more offenses, so by definition, I think that’s a fair comment.”

IDAHO MURDERS: BRYAN KOHBERGER DEFENSE ‘FIRMLY BELIEVES’ IN HIS INNOCENCE

Kauldhar’s alleged killing spree began on Oct. 1 when authorities in Toronto responded and found a woman in her 60s dead inside a home. The next day, first responders were called to a disturbance at John Allan Park in Niagara Falls.

When they arrived, they found a man with critical injuries. 

“Despite medical intervention efforts by Niagara Emergency Medical Services and the Niagara Falls Fire Service, 47-year-old Lance Cunningham was pronounced deceased at the scene,” a Niagara Regional Police Service statement said. 

ACCUSED IDAHO COLLEGE KILLER BRYAN KOHBERGER’S TRIAL DATE PUSHED BACK

Mario Bilich, left, and Lance Cunningham were killed last week, Canadian authorities said. (Hamilton Police Service)

The third slaying occurred on Oct. 3. A man was found stabbed in a parking lot in Hamilton, a Toronto suburb. The victim, identified as 77-year-old Mario Bilich, a retired teacher, was taken to a hospital where he later died. 

“Investigators were able to link the Hamilton homicide to the recent murder in John Allen Park in Niagara Falls, determining the suspect matched the description in both cases,” police said. “An additional link was made to the active homicide investigation from October 1 in Toronto.” 

A Niagara Regional Police Service building (Niagara Regional Police Service)

Investigators said Cunningham and Bilich were randomly targeted but the Toronto victim was known to the suspect. Authorities later identified the Toronto murder victim but have not disclosed her name publicly. 

Kauldhar is charged with first-degree murder for the Hamilton killing and second-degree murder for the Toronto and Niagara slayings, police said.

Melbourne, Australia – Myanmar’s remote jungle hills may be a world away from sun-soaked Australia, but the two countries share an insidious bond – crystalline methamphetamine.

Otherwise known as “ice” or “crystal meth”, crystalline methamphetamine is a highly addictive substance which has permeated Australia’s suburbs.

The Australian Federal Police estimates about 70 percent of the drug comes from northeastern Myanmar, near the Golden Triangle, where the country borders Thailand and Laos, and is transported through Southeast Asia before arriving in Australia by boat.

A recent National Drug Strategy survey showed that one out of every 100 Australians over the age of 14 had used ice in the last 12 months, mostly in the country’s major cities.

The same survey also indicated that about 7.5 percent of Australia’s population had tried methamphetamine during their lifetime.

Charlie Samson, who lives in Australia’s second-biggest city, Melbourne, first smoked ice when he was just 18. He soon found himself addicted.

“We’d go out for drinks, and someone knew a bloke who had some ice. And so we all tried it,” he told Al Jazeera.

“The next week, we did the same thing, and then it snowballed from there. Fast forward three or four months, I was secretly buying it on a Monday, because I’d been up all weekend.”

At the peak of his addiction, he was spending 2,500 Australian dollars ($1,690) a week on the drug. Despite his habit, Samson managed to maintain his well-paid construction job with the vast majority of his salary going on the drug.

“Before I rolled out of bed, I used to have to smoke about a gramme just to be able to function,” he said.

‘Smelled like tea’

Australia’s official health campaigns often declare ice users to be “psychotic” and “violent”, underscoring the prevailing stereotype of the homeless “meth addict”.

However, Samson told Al Jazeera that ice addiction could affect anyone and that people could remain apparently functioning members of society even when addicted.

He said he had seen lawyers and businesspeople all fall prey to the drug.

“I’ve met a few people who I thought, ‘He’s got a family, he’s paying a mortgage. And now he’s got nothing.’ Because at some point, it gets a hold of you, even if it’s not financially, it’ll get you mentally,” he said.

Samson, who is now 29, managed to hold down his job for six years before the addiction completely overran his life, and it was only after a short stint in prison that he managed to get clean.

While Samson told Al Jazeera he never knew the source of the ice he bought, he did recall batches that “smelled like tea”, indicative of methamphetamine originating from Myanmar, which is often smuggled in tea boxes.

The production of methamphetamine and heroin has increased in Myanmar since the 2021 military coup plunged the country into crisis and civil war, with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) saying that seizures of methamphetamine hit a record 190 tonnes in 2023 across East and Southeast Asia.

The UNODC says that Myanmar has also emerged as the world’s leading source of opium.

Most of the drug production is centred in the northern hills of Shan and Wa states, regions which have long been notorious for opium production and trade.

But the civil war has seen a spike in the drug trade, including heroin, methamphetamine and what is known as yaba – small pills containing a mix of methamphetamine and caffeine – with the proceeds used to finance the conflict.

The Australian Federal Police, which maintains ongoing operations in the region as part of efforts to stem the flow of drugs to Australia, told Al Jazeera that “transnational crime is not only a result of, but a driver of the current conflict, as it is financing various actors in the conflict and, therefore, reducing the incentive to pursue a durable peace.”

“Like heroin historically, methamphetamine production remains a significant source of income to transnational crime groups in Myanmar,” a spokesperson said. “Ongoing offshore seizures of drugs from Myanmar show this region remains a major source to the lucrative Australian market.”

Between 2012 and 2022, almost 10 tonnes of ‘tea packet’ methamphetamine was seized by the Australian Federal Police. In 2022 alone, this included more than 2.1 tonnes with a street value of more than 1 billion Australian dollars ($671.6 million).

‘Tea packet’ methamphetamine refers to methamphetamine manufactured in Southeast Asia and commonly packaged in branded tea packets for concealment and marketing purposes; different colours indicate purity, with green being the highest.

While the likely origin is Myanmar, the police told Al Jazeera it was “difficult to put a percentage on the amount of methamphetamine originating from Myanmar, as it is transhipped through multiple countries, concealing the true source of the illicit drugs”.

Increasingly potent

Samson has remained clean since leaving prison in June 2023.

But many other Australians are unable to break ice addiction and struggle even to take the first step of seeking help.

Turning Point is a Melbourne-based clinic whose services include assistance for those seeking help for methamphetamine use, including counselling and detox.

Clinical Director Shalini Arunogiri echoes Samson’s observations that methamphetamine addiction affects a variety of Australians.

“We see people who may fit that homeless stereotype,” she told Al Jazeera. “But we absolutely do see people who are working full time. We see parents. We see people who are in high functioning jobs who might be using daily.”

She added that the stigma of methamphetamine addiction is often a barrier to those seeking help.

“I think there is that real stereotype that has been portrayed in media, advertising and in public health campaigns. Those public health campaigns aren’t effective. In fact, they marginalise people who use that drug even more.”

Arunogiri says the purity of methamphetamine coming from high-volume trade regions such as Myanmar has increased over the last two decades.

“The drug that we have available in Australia for the last decade is quite potent – we’ve got very high potency crystalline methamphetamine. Here, it’s virtually impossible to get non-crystalline methamphetamine.”

She told Al Jazeera that the effects of the drug can be seen across a range of physical, mental and criminological indicators.

“One in three people who use at least every week are likely to experience psychotic symptoms – seeing things, hearing things. We know that a significant proportion go on to develop things like schizophrenia and long-term psychological illnesses. Using methamphetamine also often comes with criminal aspects as well.”

The Australian Institute of Health and Wellbeing recently reported that at least 46 percent of those entering prison had used methamphetamine in the previous 12 months.

John Coyne, Head of Strategic Policing and Law Enforcement at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told Al Jazeera that methamphetamine use in Australia “fuels a cycle of criminal activity that often leads to incarceration”.

He says this includes theft and robbery to fund addiction, as well as violent behaviour, which can be triggered by the drug.

“Additionally, the illegal nature of meth means that possession and trafficking come with harsh penalties, further contributing to incarceration rates,” he said.

Coyne says the ongoing conflict in Myanmar, along with endemic corruption and human rights abuses by the military regime, creates serious challenges for Australian police in tackling the export of drugs from the region.

“While disrupting illicit drug routes is essential for regional security, engaging with a regime known for its oppressive tactics raises ethical and legal concerns,” he said.

According to the United Nations, the Myanmar military has killed more than 5,000 civilians since the coup and has reinstated the death penalty for political activity, executing pro-democracy activists.

That the regime is also allegedly directly involved in the drug trade presents a myriad of operational and ethical challenges for Australian law enforcement.

“The Australian Federal Police must navigate these complexities carefully, ensuring that intelligence-sharing is strictly focused on disrupting drug networks without inadvertently supporting a corrupt regime,” Coyne told Al Jazeera.

“This delicate balance is crucial to uphold international norms and prevent complicity in the junta’s ongoing human rights violations.”