I'm trying to remove the description block via:
app/design/vendor/module/Magento_Catalog/layout/catalog_category_view.xml
<page xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:View/Layout/etc/page_configuration.xsd">
<body>
<referenceContainer name="content">
<block class="Magento\Catalog\Block\Category\View"
name="children_category_imgs"
template="category/children_category_imgs.phtml"
before="category.products"/>
</referenceContainer>
<referenceBlock name="catalog.compare.sidebar" remove="true"/>
<referenceBlock name="category.image" remove="true"/>
<referenceBlock name="category.description" remove="true"/>
</body>
vendor\magento\module-catalog\view\frontend\layout\catalog_category_view.xml
<page xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" layout="2columns-left" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:View/Layout/etc/page_configuration.xsd">
<body>
<referenceContainer name="columns.top">
<container name="category.view.container" htmlTag="div" htmlClass="category-view" after="-">
<block class="Magento\Catalog\Block\Category\View" name="category.image" template="Magento_Catalog::category/image.phtml"/>
<block class="Magento\Catalog\Block\Category\View" name="category.description" template="Magento_Catalog::category/description.phtml"/>
<block class="Magento\Catalog\Block\Category\View" name="category.cms" template="Magento_Catalog::category/cms.phtml"/>
</container>
</referenceContainer>
....
</page>
I have sucessfully removed the image using the same method.