The military announced Wednesday evening that an Israeli officer had been killed during fighting in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood earlier in the day, as Israel continued pummeling the area with dozens of strikes on terror targets.

The slain soldier was named as Cpt. Elay Elisha Lugasi, 21, a team commander in the 7th Armored Brigade’s 75th Battalion, from Kiryat Shmona.

Three more soldiers of the 75th Battalion were seriously wounded in the same incident, the Israel Defense Forces said.

His death brought Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip to 323.

On Wednesday morning, the IDF said some 50 sites belonging to terror groups in Shejaiya had been demolished by the Paratroopers Brigade over the previous 24 hours.

The military said the paratroopers located tunnels shafts and caches of weapons during raids in the Shejaiya area.

Meanwhile, in southern Gaza’s Rafah, the army said its airstrikes had destroyed more sites and killed several operatives.

And in the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza, the military said it had carried out drone strikes against additional operatives.

In the late afternoon of Wednesday, the IDF said an anti-aircraft missile launched from the Gaza Strip had struck a home in the evacuated southern Israeli community of Kfar Maimon, causing damage.

There were no reports of injuries. Sirens had sounded in the community amid the incident.

The Hamas terror group has at times tried to attack Israeli aircraft with shoulder-launched missiles.

The war in Gaza was started by Hamas’s October 7 attack, in which Palestinian terrorists killed some 1,200 people and seized 251 hostages. Israel responded with a military campaign to destroy the Gaza-ruling terror group and free the hostages.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says close to 38,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 15,000 combatants in battle and some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack.

Agencies and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.