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Historic Antakya Is a ‘City of Containers’ One Year After Devastating Earthquake in Türkiye

Asharq Al- Awsat tours the city a year after the disaster

Levelled areas are seen in Antakya city. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Levelled areas are seen in Antakya city. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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Historic Antakya Is a ‘City of Containers’ One Year After Devastating Earthquake in Türkiye

Levelled areas are seen in Antakya city. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Levelled areas are seen in Antakya city. (Asharq Al-Awsat)

One year after the deadly earthquake that struck Türkiye, it is almost impossible to come across someone who has not lost a family member, a friend, or a neighbor in Antakya center. The southern city lost half of its population after many immigrated to the neighboring cities, as well as Istanbul and Ankara, after burying their loved ones and collecting some of their furniture from the ruined buildings.

The survivors are now trying to rebuild their lives amid the ruins, ghost buildings, pervasive dust from the demolition sites, and the noise of the heavy machinery operating in demolishing the damaged buildings.

The first few months after the earthquake, one common image shared on social media was that of a shopkeeper reopening his partially repaired store, placing a container among the rubble of the destroyed buildings in the deserted city center, but with no customer in sight. These images became the symbols for the survivors who were demanding to be heard amid the huge wave of immigration from the city. The immigration led to concerns that the reconstruction would be neglected due to the absence of a remaining stable workforce.

The shopkeepers were pictured with water and a broom in their hands, the main arms of their struggle to keep their stores neat and clean amid the dust and rubble. Graffiti depicting the resisting shopkeeper soon emerged in the city, accompanied with slogans such as, “We have not left,” “Don’t lose hope; we will come back,” “Our houses have collapsed, not our dreams.” Some of this graffiti was even adopted by kebab shops run by owners who wanted to keep alive the memory of the earthquake and the resilience of the Hatay people to rebuild their lives.

As we approach the anniversary of the earthquake, many more shops have opened, and the local vegetable and fruit market is buzzing with people. Yet, everyone has something to say about how hard their lives have become.

Nothing has changed

Visitors are surprised that a year since the disaster, the city remains the same. It looks as devastated as ever. Among the rubble, tents, containers, and makeshift tinware constructions could be seen nearly everywhere, functioning as homes, shops, restaurants, banks, and offices.

The cityscape was so drastically changed by the disaster that one common experience shared by several survivors was getting lost in places they had known all their lives. Without any trees, historical buildings, cafes, or meeting points as landmarks, the residents couldn’t figure out where their homes used to be. Yiğit, a university student, explained that it once took him almost an hour to meet his friend, as no one was able to describe their location. He said, “We ended up using FaceTime and our voice to make ourselves heard to one another.”

Container towns

One year after the earthquake, many survivors who remained in the city moved either to container towns or outside Antakya to other districts, as well as villages in Hatay. According to an official declaration in November 2023, more than 50,000 households were living in 175 container towns scattered across the city.

Those who lost their homes were able to benefit from an aid program that covered moving expenses and rental costs. However, the sums allocated as part of the program were not enough to rent a flat, as the prices had rocketed, due to the city’s loss of many buildings in the earthquake and the high inflation rate in Türkiye.

Many inhabitants, who did not have anywhere else to go, opted to move to container towns, which meant giving up their rental assistance.

In addition, a few still live in tents. One of the tent cities installed on a side street, a few kilometers away from central Antakya, accommodates around 50 Syrian families.

Mohammad lives with his wife and six children in one tent. When asked whether he was able to receive any aid, he replied: “Some people brought food for some time, but it has stopped now.” Mohammad is unable to work because a wall fell on his shoulder when he was trying to escape his house during the earthquake. So, his three sons have taken up jobs at a furniture shop.

They plan to modify their tent to accommodate for the winter and continue to live there. Mohammad does not have much hope about upgrading to a container. Frequent water and electricity cuts are the biggest hardship for him and his family as they receive electricity only every other day.

The power cuts are still a major problem in other parts of Antakya. Elif, a teacher living in one of the container towns, explained that the cuts have become less frequent compared to the initial months after the earthquake, yet when it does happen, it can sometimes take up to 48 hours for it to be restored.

“After the earthquake,” she said, “the immediate need was to restore electricity as soon as possible, and the workers rapidly and arbitrarily installed them wherever they were needed to meet the demand. Now, when a cut happens, it takes them a long time to figure out which cable to fix.”

For many survivors, rain is a major concern due to the fragile infrastructure of the city and the temporary housing sites. Not only do electricity cuts come often with rain, but also most containers are not waterproof. Water leaks from the top and beneath in places where the towns are built on plains.

Survivors blame it on the lack of planning and coordination which persisted since the rescue operations. “We are unable to plan anything and are just trying to pass each day at a time,” said Senem, a 45-year-old woman who lives in a 21-square-meter container with her three children and husband. Her children’s school collapsed during the earthquake, and now they are enrolled in remote education.

No place for families

In many financially better-off families, women immigrated to other cities for the education of their children, while men stayed in Hatay to continue their work. Yusuf is one of them. He currently lives in a container in his village and rents a flat in Istanbul for his wife and children.

After a short stay in Istanbul, Yusuf realized the difficulty of restarting a business there and returned to Antakya to reopen his shoe shop. After the earthquake, his new customers were mainly soldiers, police officers, and workers who came to the city as part of rescue operations or for construction work.

Many families indeed followed a similar pattern, which dramatically changed the men-to-women ratio in the city from 61,8 to 38,1%, according to the Hatay Planning Center.

Meanwhile, those whose buildings survived with “minor” or “moderate” damage have gradually moved back to their houses despite their constant fear of aftershocks and another earthquake. Those who live in moderately damaged buildings were left in limbo for months because authorities were in disagreement over whether such buildings would be safe to live in after reinforcement or should be demolished and rebuilt. Finally, in November, nine months after the earthquake, the state-run disaster and emergency organization (Afad) issued a memorandum clarifying the situation about such buildings.

Solidarity destroyed by politics

In the weeks that followed the earthquake, many individuals, groups, and NGOs stood in solidarity with the survivors, in particular with the residents of Hatay, as the city was seen as a living example of multiculturalism that boasts Arab-Alawite, Sunni, Christian, Armenian, and Jewish populations.

As soon as the heartbreaking images were broadcast on social media and on TV channels, citizens from different parts of the country tried to reach the region with their own means to send donations or help in rescue operations. New networks of solidarity were established inside and outside to work on how to rebuild life in the city. These stories are still vivid in the memories of the victims.

One year after the earthquake, however, memories of solidarity are overshadowed by the stories of disputes and disagreements, some of which had existed in the city before the disaster. No doubt, the highly polarized political atmosphere of the country also acts as a catalyst for deepening disputes and divisions.

The Arab-Alawite community of the city - the second largest after the Sunni population - which generally votes for the main opposition party, the Republican People's Party, has been particularly wary of the actions taken by the government of the Justice and Development Party. Müjgan, a 45-year-old restaurant owner, said the part of Antakya where she is from did not receive any government aid during the first three days after the earthquake becuase the region is mainly populated by Arab-Alawites.

Like many other Arab-Alawites in the city, she believes that the government used the earthquake to divide the community by making their lives harder and indirectly forcing them to immigrate by leaving them with no other option.

According to Müjgan, the division between the Sunni and Arab-Alawite populations deepened, in particular after the arrival of Syrian refugees in the city, which she also viewed as part of the government’s policy against the Arab-Alawite community. Two expropriation decisions of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan taken in the months following the earthquake also deepened the concerns of the Arab-Alawite community.

These decisions allowed the government-led housing agency (Toki) to construct new buildings in Dikmece and Gülderen, the two neighborhoods of Antakya populated mainly by Arab-Alawites. Both decisions are currently before the administrative court. Soon after the presidential decision, Dikmece villagers started a resistance against the expropriation of their olive groves and organized several protests, which led to violent clashes between them and the local police.

Reconstruction

Local lawyer Ecevit Alkan said: “There is chaos in the city, and the politicians benefit from this situation; it is easier for them to govern that way.” Besides the repercussions of the national problems in the disaster-stricken city, disputes on various matters have become part of everyday life.

Alkan said: “Disputes can be found in nearly every WhatsApp group that were formed between the residents of different apartments who must decide together what to do about their collapsed buildings.” The options are either to reconstruct in the same place, which requires the consent of 50% of the flat owners, or replace their right of ownership with a flat from Toki.

Whatever they choose, the government will provide a grant of 750,000TL (around 24,700 dollars) and an interest-free loan for the same amount, the repayment of which starts two years later. These sums, however, are very low compared to the inflation in the country. Moreover, most of the survivors lost both their homes and jobs in the earthquake and fear that the new buildings might turn out to cost them much more than what the grant and the credit would cover, and so, they might end up in huge debt.

Currently, the buildings in the city are categorized into four groups: “destroyed”, “heavy damage”, “moderate damage”, and “minor or no damage”. However, these categorizations have also become a major source of dispute as many owners have taken the status of their properties to the courts in the hope of changing them to either “moderate” or “minor” damage to prevent their demolition.

Hatay, as well as its central district Antakya, are replete with buildings with a sign that says “Don’t demolish, taken to the court,” as the owners fear that if they lose even the ruins of what they used to have, their land can be seized for some government projects or new unaffordable apartment building. Government officials have expressed concern about the excessive number of cases that have inundated the local courts and which they believe are delaying reconstruction in the city.

Bazaar dispute

The historical bazaar in the city, Uzunçarşı, is much more vibrant than it was a couple of months ago. However, the shopkeepers are also in disagreement with one another about its fate. The official plan is to demolish and rebuild it with better infrastructure.

Not everyone is on board with the plan, including Yusuf, who believes that the reconstruction would take much longer than what the officials have promised. He said the government has yet to keep any of its pledges. Also, if the bazaar were to be demolished, the shopkeepers will be temporarily transferred to a container bazaar, which according to Yusuf, lacks the soul that the historical market has and hardly attracts any customers.

The pro-government residents of the city are certainly more hopeful about the process, and they believe that if everyone puts their trust in the government, things will flow more smoothly. However, even Serdar, who works as a civil servant in the AKP-led Antakya municipality, admits that, compared to other cities hit by the earthquake, in Hatay, things are moving very slowly.

He said: “Hatay is seen almost like a tassel hanging beneath the mainland... Its problems hardly enter the political agenda as a priority.” Such sentiments are common among the locals, regardless of their affiliations.

Salim, for instance, painted his tractor in rainbow colors and described at the back how the city was left alone after the earthquake. He put on a makeshift license plate “31 Earthquake 4.17”, with 31 indicating the traffic code in Hatay and 4.17 the time when the first earthquake hit the city the hardest.

Salim used to own a restaurant before the earthquake, and had bought the old tractor to use it as an attraction in the front. He didn’t know that it would become his livelihood. For the moment, he uses it to collect items taken out of the demolition sites, but does not know what work he will find afterwards.

Ambiguity that has paralyzed almost every aspect of life in Hatay and the absence of effective political action to meet the urgent needs of the locals characterize the general atmosphere in the city one year after the earthquake. However, with municipal elections set for March 31, the politics in the city now revolve around electoral pledges made by candidates, whose credibility is doubted by many locals. If none of their pledges were fulfilled in a year, what are they hoping to achieve in a few months?

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Features

How the Assad Regime Covered Up Its Crimes

Piles of ransacked papers in a room in Maher al-Assad's private office in the hills above Damascus. (AFP)
Piles of ransacked papers in a room in Maher al-Assad's private office in the hills above Damascus. (AFP)
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How the Assad Regime Covered Up Its Crimes

Piles of ransacked papers in a room in Maher al-Assad's private office in the hills above Damascus. (AFP)
Piles of ransacked papers in a room in Maher al-Assad's private office in the hills above Damascus. (AFP)

Thousands of documents and interviews with Assad-era officials reveal how the Syrian regime worked to conceal evidence of its atrocities during the civil war, according to a report published by The New York Times.

The heads of the security agencies arrived in convoys of black SUVs to Bashar al-Assad’s presidential palace, a maze of marble and stone on a hillside overlooking Damascus.

Leaks about his regime’s mass graves and torture facilities were mounting and top Syrian leaders wanted them to stop.

So, in the fall of 2018, they summoned Assad’s feared security chiefs to discuss how to cover their tracks better, according to two people briefed on the meeting.

One of the security officials proposed scrubbing the identities of Syrians who died in secret prisons from their records, the two people said, recalling what participants in the meeting had told them.

That way there would be no paper trail. Assad’s top security chief, Ali Mamlouk, agreed to consider the suggestion.

Forging evidence

Months after that meeting, security agencies began interfering with evidence of the regime’s crimes, an investigation by The New York Times found.

Some security officials doctored paperwork so deaths of detainees could not be traced back to the security branch in which they were imprisoned and died.

Some omitted details like the number of the branch and the detainee’s identification number. And top government officials ordered security agencies to forge confessions of prisoners who had died in their custody.

Written confessions, they reasoned, would give the government some legal cover for the mass deaths of detainees.

Top secret memos

The Times reviewed thousands of pages of internal Syrian documents, including memos marked “Top Secret,” many of which we photographed inside Syria’s most notorious security branches.

The newspaper also interviewed more than 50 security and political officials, interrogators, prison guards, forensic doctors, mass-grave workers and others government employees, many of whom helped verify the documents.

Taken collectively, the documents and accounts provide the most comprehensive picture to date of the regime’s efforts to evade accountability for its industrial-scale system of repression. They also offer a rare look at how a secretive dictatorship responded in real time to growing international isolation and pressure.

Under Assad’s rule, more than 100,000 people disappeared, according to the United Nations, more than in any other regime since the Nazis.

The documents show that the government went to elaborate, sometimes tedious lengths to cover it up. Officials held meetings to discuss public-relations messaging. They strategized about how to handle families whose loved ones had been imprisoned. They worried about paperwork that might be used against them if they ever faced prosecution.

From documentation to threats

Early in the war, security agencies kept meticulous records of their activities, and the Syrians who vanished in their custody. Every interrogation was transcribed, every death noted, every corpse photographed.

Then the records became a liability. In January 2014, images of more than 6,000 bodies from secret prisons, some bearing signs of torture, were smuggled out of the country by a Syrian military photographer, code-named Caesar.

The photos were the first detailed evidence of torture and executions by the Assad government since the war began. Months later, France submitted the images to the United Nations Security Council, which lent them greater legitimacy and raised the prospect that the regime would be charged with war crimes.

The Syrian security apparatus decided to mount a defense.

In August 2014, senior military, political and intelligence officials met with Syrian legal scholars to discuss their strategy, according to a memo viewed by The Times that described a meeting of the National Security Bureau, the coordinating hub for Syria’s intelligence and security agencies.

The Times verified the deliberations laid out in the memo with two former officials who were briefed on the discussions.

Over two days, according to the memo, the senior officials plotted to discredit the images. Because there were no names connected to the photos, they could argue that only a handful were of political prisoners and that many were opposition fighters killed in battle or petty criminals, the memo said.

The officials also advised others in the government to “avoid going into detail and avoid attempts to prove or deny any facts,” the memo said. They urged them instead to “undermine the credibility” of the leaker, Caesar.

The mass grave

Some of the most damning evidence of the regime’s crimes were the mass graves where it dumped prisoners’ bodies during the civil war.

The mass-grave operation in the capital was overseen by Col. Mazen Ismandar, who organized teams to pick up bodies from military hospitals in Damascus and then bury them in sites around the city, according to three of his former colleagues.

Ismandar was ordered to move all of the bodies to a new site, two of his former colleagues said.

That operation, which Reuters first reported in October, was carried out over the next two years. The team used excavators to dig up bodies, piled them into dump trucks and drove them to a site in the Dhumair desert, northeast of Damascus.

“There were civilians, people in military clothes, old people with white beards, people who were naked,” said Ahmad Ghazal, a mechanic in Dhumair city who frequently repaired the trucks and eventually got to know the drivers.

He often tried to get a look at the bodies, he said, in the hope of finding the remains of two cousins who disappeared in 2015. He never found them.

The downfall

When the United States passed the Caesar Act in late 2019, many hailed the sanctions as a step toward justice for the victims of war crimes by the Assad government.

But the sanctions appeared to have little deterrent effect.

Interrogators in two agencies, Branch 248 and the Air Force Intelligence Directorate, said that they and their colleagues had become still more ruthless with prisoners, because they were angry about the plummeting value of their salaries as the economy weakened, in part from sanctions.

Despite the cover-up efforts, by 2023 the regime’s crimes were catching up with it.

In April 2023, French criminal investigative judges issued arrest warrants for three senior Assad officials, including Mamlouk, for the torture, enforced disappearance and death of two Syrian French nationals.

Then, in December 2024, the regime quickly came crashing down.

The opposition coalition led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, now the Syrian president, swept into Damascus in a lightning advance.

Assad, Mamlouk, Hassan and other top officials fled to Russia.

Ismandar, the official in charge of the mass-grave operations, also fled. The night the fighters arrived, he pulled a wooden box from the locked cabinet behind his desk in his office, according to one of his aides. Inside were the identification cards of Syrian civilians who had died in custody or been executed. He handed out the IDs to some of his staff, believing they might help them escape, the aide said.

Ismandar remains at large.

Features

How Israel’s Multi-Ton Truck Bombs Ripped Through Gaza City

Destroyed buildings after Israeli military operations in Gaza City, November 12, 2025. (Reuters)
Destroyed buildings after Israeli military operations in Gaza City, November 12, 2025. (Reuters)
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How Israel’s Multi-Ton Truck Bombs Ripped Through Gaza City

Destroyed buildings after Israeli military operations in Gaza City, November 12, 2025. (Reuters)
Destroyed buildings after Israeli military operations in Gaza City, November 12, 2025. (Reuters)

In the weeks before the Gaza ceasefire on October 10, Israel widely deployed a new weapon: M113 Armored Personnel Carriers repurposed to carry between 1 and 3 tons of explosives, Reuters found.

As Israeli troops pushed toward the center of Gaza City, these powerful bombs, along with airstrikes and armor-plated bulldozers, leveled swathes of buildings, drone footage and satellite images show.

In most cases, but not all, the inhabitants fled ahead of demolitions after Israeli warnings, residents, Israeli security sources and Gaza authorities said.

Hesham Mohammad Badawi’s five-storey home on Dawla Street in the affluent Tel-al-Hawa suburb, damaged by an airstrike earlier in the war, was completely destroyed by an APC explosion on September 14, he and a relative said, leaving him and 41 family members homeless.

Badawi, who was a few hundred meters away, said he heard at least five APCs detonate in roughly five-minute intervals. He said he received no ​evacuation warning before the demolition and family members escaped “by a miracle” amid explosions and heavy gunfire.

Several buildings in the same block were demolished around that time, satellite images show.

The family is now staying with relatives in different parts of the city, Badawi said, while he lives in a tent by his former home. Israel’s military did not respond to Reuters questions about the incident. Reuters could not establish what Israel targeted in the attack or independently verify all the details of Badawi’s account of the events.

When Reuters visited in November, remains of at least one of the vehicles were strewn among large piles of rubble.

"We could not believe this was our neighborhood, this was our street," Badawi said.

To compile a detailed account of the role of APC-based bombs by the Israeli military in Tel-al-Hawa and the neighboring Sabra district in the six weeks before the ceasefire, Reuters spoke to three Israeli security sources, a retired Israeli military brigadier, an Israeli reservist, Gazan authorities and three military experts.

Seven Gaza City residents said their homes or those of neighbors were levelled or severely damaged by the explosions, which several likened to an earthquake. Analysis of Reuters footage by two of the military experts confirmed wreckage of at least two exploded APCs among the rubble at sites in Gaza City.

Israel packed 1 to 3 tons of ordnance in APCs, three military experts estimated, based on cabin space and wreckage of vehicle armor. Some of the ordnance was likely non–military ammonium nitrate or emulsion, though without chemical testing that conclusion is not certain, they said.

Such a multi-ton explosion could approach an equivalent power to Israel’s largest airborne bombs, the 2,000-pound US-made Mark 84, said two experts, who examined Reuters footage of the blast area and vehicle remains.

It could scatter vehicle fragments hundreds of meters and break close-by exterior walls and building columns. The blast wave would be strong enough to potentially collapse a multi-storey building, they said.

HIGHLY UNUSUAL

APCs generally transport troops and equipment on the battlefield. The three military experts ‌consulted by Reuters said use of ‌the vehicles as bombs was highly unusual and risked excessive damage to civilian dwellings.

In response to detailed Reuters questions for this story, Israel’s military said it was committed to the rules of war. Regarding ‌allegations of ⁠destruction of civilian ​infrastructure, it said it used ‌what it called engineering equipment only for “essential operational purposes,” without disclosing further details.

Decisions are guided by military necessity, distinction, and proportionality, it said.

In an interview with Reuters in Gaza for this story, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said Israel’s demolitions with armored vehicles were aimed at the large-scale displacement of the city's residents, which Israel has denied.

The reporting provides new evidence of the power of these low-tech weapons and how they came to be widely used.

Retired reservist Brigadier-General Amir Avivi, founder of the Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF), a think tank, called the weapon an “innovation of the Gaza War.” One of the security sources said its increasing use partly responded to US restrictions on transfers of heavy Mark-84 airborne bombs and Caterpillar bulldozers.

Israel’s military and Prime Minister’s Office also did not respond to questions about the reasons for the shift in tactics. The US State Department, White House and Department of War did not respond to Reuters questions for this story.

Before the war, Tel-al-Hawa and Sabra, a historic area of modest houses in south-central Gaza City, bustled with bakeries, shopping malls, mosques, banks and universities.

Now, large parts lie in ruins.

Satellite imagery analysis by Reuters showed that about 650 buildings in Sabra, Tel-al-Hawa and surrounding areas were destroyed in the six weeks between September 1 and October 11.

MILITARY NECESSITY?

Two international law scholars, the UN human rights office and two of the military experts who reviewed Reuters findings said use of such large explosives in dense residential urban areas may have failed one or more principles of humanitarian law that prohibit attacking civilian infrastructure and using disproportionate force.

"The basis that some of it may be booby-trapped" or once used by Hamas snipers is not enough to justify mass destruction, Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN Human Rights Office in ⁠the Occupied Palestinian Territory, told Reuters, referring to Israel’s allegation that Hamas placed improvised explosive devices in houses, which Hamas denies.

In some circumstances, buildings could lose legal protection and become targets if Israel had evidence Hamas used them for military advantage, said Afonso Seixas Nunes, Associate Professor in the School of Law at Saint Louis University.

Israel’s military did not respond to Reuters requests to provide such evidence.

If not the result of military necessity, the ‌demolition of civilian infrastructure could amount to wanton destruction of property, which is a war crime, Sunghay said.

The level of ruin reflects a broader trend: 81% of Gaza’s buildings suffered damage or destruction ‍during the war, according to the UN Satellite Center. The area including Gaza City experienced most damage since July, with approximately 5,600 newly affected structures, it said ‍in October.

In August, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters Israel was packing tons of explosives into APCs because Hamas had placed explosive devices in “just about every single building” in evacuated areas.

"We detonate them, and they set off all the booby traps. That's why you see the destruction," Netanyahu said.

In response ‍to questions for this story, Qassem, the Hamas spokesman, denied booby trapping buildings, and said Hamas did not have the capacity to set devices at the scale Israel claimed.

FORCES ENTER GAZA CITY

Later in August, Israeli forces entered Gaza City with the declared aim of eliminating Hamas and freeing hostages held by fighters since the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war.

Israel ordered a full evacuation of the city in September.

As troops advanced, backed by tanks and airstrikes, they extensively damaged eastern suburbs before approaching central areas of the city, where most displaced people were sheltering.

Hundreds of thousands fled south. The UN estimated 600,000-700,000 people remained in the city.

Israel’s defense minister has said soldiers demolished 25 towers that Israel said had Hamas tunnels underneath or were used as lookout points. The UN human rights office says Israel has provided no evidence the buildings were military targets.

Among the destruction visible in Sabra, Tel-al-Hawa and South Rimal between September 1 and October 11, Reuters identified al-Roya tower, which housed the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, a prominent human rights office that worked with charity Christian ​Aid, and al-Roya 2, a mixture of business and flats, brought down by airstrikes on September 7 and 8.

Two wings of the Islamic University of Gaza and a mosque on the campus were destroyed. In one six-block corner of Tel-al-Hawa almost every building was demolished - more than 60 in total.

Beyond the two cases of APC explosions analyzed in detail for this story, and airstrikes on towers caught on video, Reuters could not establish what weapons Israel deployed to demolish buildings, or the total number of APCs detonated ⁠from August until the ceasefire.

Gaza’s Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said the army detonated hundreds of APCs in that period, as many as 20 daily. Israel’s military did not reply to a question on numbers.

BADAWI’S HOUSE

Among the buildings destroyed was Badawi’s family home of four decades, along with more than 20 neighboring buildings in the same period.

"We didn’t recognize this as our house," he said.

Two military experts said Reuters footage of the area showed remains of at least one detonated APC.

The explosion had torn one APC caterpillar track from its running gear and “physically thrown it onto the roof” of a multi-storey building, a retired senior British military bomb disposal officer said, noting that M113 tracks each weigh hundreds of kilograms.

A thick, ripped piece of metal and a wheel torn in half, both scattered at the property, were consistent with a detonation from within the APC, said Gareth Collett, a retired British Brigadier General and leading authority on explosives and bomb disposal. He said the large size of the fragments was indicative of a commercial low energy explosive.

THE RETURN OF THE M113

Bought from the US after the Yom Kippur War in the 1970s, thousands of M113s were deemed to insufficiently protect soldiers and were mothballed, military historian Yagil Henkin said.

FMC Corp, originally the M113’s primary manufacturer, did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment about its use as a weapon and potential associated human rights concerns.

BAE Systems, which currently provides maintenance for the vehicle globally, did not reply to Reuters questions about Israel's new use of the M113 other than to say it currently had no direct military sales to the country. It said equipment it sold to the US government could reach other countries indirectly.

In May, Israel posted a public tender seeking to sell an unspecified number of M113s internationally, public documents show.

The tender was later cancelled, according to an undated posting on the Ministry of Defense website. The cancellation allowed Israel to scale up repurposing M113s, one of the security sources told Reuters. The military did not respond to Reuters’ questions about the tender.

The first media reports of an APC detonating in Gaza date to mid-2024.

Use accelerated this year when Israel rationed stocks after the US paused deliveries of Mark-84 bombs over concerns about the bombs use in residential areas, the source said.

CATERPILLAR D9

The increased role of APC-based bombs also coincided with shortages in Israel of US company Caterpillar's giant D9 bulldozer, long used by Israel’s military for demolition, one of the security sources said.

Hamas heavily targeted D9s earlier in the war, killing or injuring soldiers and damaging the vehicles, the source said. Alarmed by their use to demolish homes, the US paused D9 sales to Israel in November 2024, adding to the shortage. Under President Donald Trump, D9 transfers resumed.

Caterpillar did not respond to questions from Reuters about the military ‌use of its machines in Gaza demolitions and has not publicly commented on the matter.

Amid the shortages, the military began using other methods of demolition, including APCs, another of the security sources said.

Danny Orbach, an Israeli military historian, told Reuters demolitions were normal in war, made necessary in Gaza due to tunnels and booby traps. He said Israel’s military was underprepared for the complex fighting, leading to the conclusion there was “no other way to fight such a war except destroying all buildings above ground.”

Israel's military told Reuters targets were reviewed prior to attack and the munition selected “to achieve the military objective while minimizing collateral damage” to civilians and civilian infrastructure.

Features

What to Know about China's Drills around Taiwan

A rocket launches from Pingtan island in eastern China's Fujian province, the closest point to Taiwan. ADEK BERRY / AFP
A rocket launches from Pingtan island in eastern China's Fujian province, the closest point to Taiwan. ADEK BERRY / AFP
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What to Know about China's Drills around Taiwan

A rocket launches from Pingtan island in eastern China's Fujian province, the closest point to Taiwan. ADEK BERRY / AFP
A rocket launches from Pingtan island in eastern China's Fujian province, the closest point to Taiwan. ADEK BERRY / AFP

China's military drills around Taiwan entered their second day on Tuesday, the sixth major maneuvers Beijing has held near the self-ruled island in recent years.

AFP breaks down what we know about the drills:

What are the drills about?

The ultimate cause is China's claim that Taiwan is part of its territory, an assertion Taipei rejects.

The two have been governed separately since the end of a civil war in 1949 saw Communist fighters take over most of China and their Nationalist enemies flee to Taiwan.

Beijing has refused to rule out using force to achieve its goal of "reunification" with the island of 23 million people.

It opposes countries having official ties with Taiwan and denounces any calls for independence.

China vowed "forceful measures" after Taipei said this month that its main security backer, the United States, had approved an $11 billion arms sale to the island.

After the drills began on Monday, Beijing warned "external forces" against arming the island, but did not name Washington.

China also recently rebuked Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi after she said the use of force against Taiwan could warrant a military response from Tokyo.

What do the drills look like?

Chinese authorities have published a map showing several large zones encircling Taiwan where the operations are taking place.

Code-named "Justice Mission 2025", they use live ammunition and involve army, navy, air and rocket forces.

They simulate a blockade of key Taiwanese ports including Keelung in the north and Kaohsiung in the south, according to a Chinese military spokesperson and state media.

They also focus on combat readiness patrols on sea and in the air, seizing "comprehensive" control over adversaries, and deterring aggression beyond the Taiwanese island chain.

China says it has deployed destroyers, frigates, fighters and bombers to simulate strikes and assaults on maritime targets.

Taipei detected 130 Chinese military aircraft near the island in the 24 hours to 6:00 am on Tuesday (2200 GMT on Monday), close to the record 153 it logged in October 2024.

It also detected 14 Chinese navy ships and eight unspecified government vessels over the same period.

AFP journalists stationed at China's closest point to Taiwan saw at least 10 rockets blast into the air on Tuesday morning.

How has Taiwan responded?

Taipei has condemned China's "disregard for international norms and the use of military intimidation".

Its military said it has deployed "appropriate forces" and "carried out a rapid response exercise".

President Lai Ching-te said China's drills were "absolutely not the actions a responsible major power should take".

But he said Taipei would "act responsibly, without escalating the conflict or provoking disputes".

US President Donald Trump has said he is not concerned about the drills.

How common are the drills?

This is China's sixth major round of maneuvers since 2022 when a visit to Taiwan by then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi enraged Beijing.

Such activities were rare before that but China and Taiwan have come close to war over the years, notably in 1958.

China last held large-scale live-fire drills in April, surprise maneuvers that Taipei condemned.

This time, Beijing is emphasizing "keeping foreign forces that might intervene at a distance from Taiwan", said Chieh Chung, a military expert at the island's Tamkang University.

What are analysts saying?

"China's main message is a warning to the United States and Japan not to attempt to intervene if the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) uses force against Taiwan," Chieh told AFP.

But the time frame signaled by Beijing "suggests a limited range of activities", said Ja Ian Chong, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore.

Falling support for China-friendly parties in Taiwan and Beijing's own army purges and slowing economy may also have motivated the drills, he said.

But the goal was still "to cow Taiwan and any others who might support them by demonstrating that Beijing's efforts to control Taiwan are unstoppable".