Hamas has reported the most intense clashes with Israeli forces were taking place in the north in Shejaia, as well as in the south in Khan Younis, where Israeli forces reached the heart of the enclave’s second-biggest city on Wednesday.

Reuters journalists in southern Gaza have seen dead and wounded swamping the main Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, where there was no room on the floor on Friday for arriving patients sprawled across blood-smeared tiles.

With the fighting now going on in all directions, there was no place left to flee, said Yamen, sheltering at a school in central Gaza with his family.

“Inside the school is like outside it: the same feeling of fear of near death, the same suffering of starvation,” he said.