Satellite imagery analysed by the United Nations Satellite Centre shows that 30 per cent of Gaza Strip's buildings have been destroyed or damaged in the Israel offensive in the densely populated Palestinian enclave.
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Israel's assault, launched in response to attacks by Hamas militants in southern Israel on October 7, has killed more than 27,000 Palestinians, according to health authorities in the Hamas-run territory.
Air strikes, shelling and demolitions have razed entire city districts, including much civilian infrastructure.
"In total, a staggering 69,147 structures, equivalent to approximately 30 per cent of the Gaza Strip's total structures, are affected," the United Nations Satellite Centre, UNOSAT, said.
It said 22,131 structures in the enclave have been identified as destroyed, with an additional 14,066 deemed severely damaged and 32,950 having sustained moderate damage.
UNOSAT used satellite imagery from January 6-7, which it compared with six other sets of images including some dating from before the Israeli offensive.
UNOSAT said that the regions of Gaza City and Khan Younis had experienced the most significant increase in damage since the previous analysis.
The two areas showed 10,280 and 11,894 newly damaged structures respectively, compared with UNOSAT's previous analysis based on images from November 26.
UNOSAT's analysis also showed that an estimated 93,800 housing units have been damaged in the Gaza Strip.
About 1200 people were killed in the Hamas raid on Israel that triggered the offensive.
Israeli forces shelled the outskirts of the last refuge on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip on Friday, where the displaced population, penned against the border fence in their hundreds of thousands, feared a new assault with nowhere left to flee.
More than half of Gaza's 2.3 million residents are homeless and crammed into Rafah.
Tens of thousands more have arrived in recent days, carrying belongings in their arms and pulling children on carts, since Israeli forces last week launched one of the biggest assaults of the war to capture adjacent Khan Younis, the main southern city.
If the Israeli tanks keep coming, "we will be left with two choices: stay and die or climb the walls into Egypt," said Emad, 55, a businessman and father of six, reached on a mobile phone chat app.
"Most of Gaza's population are in Rafah. If the tanks storm in, it will be a massacre like never before during this war."
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Thursday that troops would now turn to Rafah, which along with Deir al-Balah just north of Khan Younis is among the last areas not taken in an almost four-month-old assault.
"We are achieving our missions in Khan Younis, and we will also reach Rafah and eliminate terror elements that threaten us," Gallant said in a statement.
As the only part of Gaza with access to the limited food and medical aid trickling across the border, Rafah and nearby parts of Khan Younis have become a warren of makeshift tents, clogged by winter mud.
Wind and cold add to the misery, blowing tents down or flooding them and the ground in-between.
"What should we do? We live in multiple miseries, a war, starvation and now the rain," said Um Badri, a mother of five from Gaza City, now in a tent in Khan Younis.
"We used to wait for winter, to enjoy watching the rain from the balcony of our house. Now, our house is gone, and the rainwater has flooded the tent we have ended up in."
With phone service mostly absent across Gaza, residents climbed a sandy berm at the border fence and crouched beside the razor wire hoping for an Egyptian mobile signal.
The United Nations says rescuers can no longer reach the sick and wounded on the battlefield in Khan Younis, and the prospect of combat reaching Rafah is almost unthinkable.
Mediators are awaiting a response from Hamas to a proposal drafted last week with Israeli and US spy chiefs and passed on by Egypt and Qatar, for the war's first extended ceasefire.
Australian Associated Press
