Scores of displaced Palestinians fled the grounds of a hospital in southern Gaza as fighting raged on Wednesday in and around the city of Khan Younis, where the Israeli military says it is trying to crush a Hamas stronghold.

Videos verified by The New York Times show families fleeing the hospital, Nasser Medical Center in Khan Younis, carrying duffel bags, backpacks and blankets as the sound of explosions reverberated. The Israeli military said this week that they had detected mortar fire aimed at its forces from the hospital complex, the largest in the southern Gaza Strip.

The fighting around the hospital underlines the dangers for civilians in southern Gaza as the Israeli military converges on Khan Younis. About 7,000 people were believed to have been sheltering on the hospital’s grounds, the United Nations’ humanitarian office said on Wednesday, adding that an “intensification of hostilities” in the area also made it harder for patients and health workers to get access to the hospital.

Many displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza have relocated several times since the war between Israel and Hamas began on Oct. 7, an experience that has reinforced the feeling that nowhere is safe in the enclave. The Gazan health authorities say that more than 24,000 people, including women and children, have been killed in the enclave since then.

Hamas’s Khan Younis brigade is among the armed group’s last major forces, as their fighters in northern Gaza have been largely subdued, according to Israeli military officials. Israeli troops, led by the military’s 98th division, have been advancing into the Palestinian city since December, after the collapse of a brief cease-fire with Hamas.