Gaza’s Hamas-controlled civil defense agency reported that Israeli forces killed dozens of people across the enclave on Wednesday, as the military pressed its offensive in Gaza City, from where hundreds of thousands have been forced to flee.

The Israel Defense Forces, meanwhile announced that a soldier in the Givati Brigade’s reconnaissance unit was seriously wounded by gunfire during fighting in the northern Gaza Strip. He was taken to a hospital for treatment and his family has been notified.

Israel has launched a major air and ground offensive on Gaza City in a bid to root out Hamas after nearly two years of war sparked by the Palestinian terror group’s October 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel.

The United Nations estimated at the end of August that around one million people lived in Gaza City and its surroundings, where it said there is a famine, a declaration that Israel has rejected as biased and methodologically flawed.

The IDF says roughly 640,000 people have since fled the city and moved southward, while the civil defense agency in its last update from a week put the number at around 450,000.

The rate of Palestinians leaving the area has risen in recent days, as the IDF pushes toward the heart of Gaza City.

Thaer Saqr, 39, told AFP on Wednesday he had left the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City the day before to head southwards with his wife, children and sister.

“The tanks on the coastal road… opened fire on us, and my sister was killed,” he claimed.

Saqr said he returned to Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital and “will not leave, even if they kill us all.”

“I appeal to the world: help us. I say to Israel: you want us to evacuate, but how can we when we have no shekels, no transportation, and no place?”

The civil defense agency said that “hundreds of families” had been sleeping on the ground for days after fleeing from northern Gaza, unable to secure temporary shelter.

The IDF on Wednesday revealed that Hamas gunmen opened fire from the Shifa Hospital compound several days ago, sharing footage from the incident.

“This use of a civilian structure, especially in an active hospital, constitutes further proof of the cynical and consistent modus operandi of the Hamas terror organization, which turns civilian infrastructure into manned terror headquarters,” the military says.

“In doing so, Hamas knowingly endangers the lives of patients, medical staff and innocent residents in the Strip,” it adds.

The IDF has raided Shifa Hospital twice since the beginning of the war, during which troops killed hundreds of gunmen, including top commanders in Hamas and Islamic Jihad, detained hundreds of terror suspects, uncovered tunnels and seized numerous weapons.

Despite overwhelming evidence, Hamas has denied operating from Shifa and other health facilities.

Hama’s civil defense said Israeli forces killed 40 people in attacks across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, including 22 killed by three airstrikes on a warehouse sheltering displaced people near the Firas market in Gaza City.

The agency’s spokesman, Mahmud Bassal, said the dead included six women and nine children.

The IDF said that the strike targeted two Hamas operatives and that its forces tried to reduce harm to civilians in the area.

AFP footage following the attack showed a scene of devastation, with Palestinians combing through large piles of rubble and warped metal as two men carried away a body wrapped in tattered blankets.

In the aftermath, sobbing women knelt over their loved ones, hugging their lifeless bodies wrapped in white shrouds.

At least six bodies were laid out on the ground, including two the size of children.

Mohammed Hajjaj, who lost his relatives, told AFP that “heavy bombing” hit the building while people were asleep.

“We came and found children and women torn apart. It was a pitiful sight.”

Israel launched its US-backed ground offensive on Gaza City earlier in September in a bid to seize the urban hub and crush Hamas.

The military has told Palestinians to relocate to a “humanitarian area” in the coastal area of al-Mawasi in the south, where it says aid, medical care and humanitarian infrastructure will be provided. Israel has carried out a number of strikes on the area targeting Hamas amid the war, including killing the terrorist organization’s chief military commander and October 7 mastermind Mohammed Deif last year.

Mahmud al-Dreimly, 44, said he had gone with his family a day earlier to live in a tent in Gaza City’s Al-Rimal neighborhood.

“I saw tanks firing into the air and sometimes at people,” he told AFP, adding: “I felt death was near.”

Dreimly said he saw tanks in the Tel al-Hawa and Al-Sabra neighborhoods, as well as on the outskirts of Al-Rimal.

The launch of the ground assault came as a UN probe accused Israel of committing “genocide” in the Gaza Strip, a claim that Jerusalem has denounced as “distorted and false.”

Since the October 7 terror onslaught, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 65,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed over 22,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.

Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.

Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 470. The toll includes two police officers and three Defense Ministry civilian contractors.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.