Israeli forces and Hamas battled fiercely throughout Gaza on Friday, witnesses said, suggesting Israel’s ground offensive was meeting stiffer resistance as the US said it expected its ally to alter a war strategy that has inflicted a huge death toll.

Residents in the small enclave reported fighting in Sheijaia, Sheikh Radwan, Zeitoun, Tuffah, and Beit Hanoun in north Gaza, east of Maghazi in central Gaza and in the centre and northern fringes of the main southern city of Khan Younis.

Hospitals in Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis and Rafah reported a new influx of dead and wounded early on Friday including two children. Four people were killed in an Israeli air strike on a house in Rafah and Israeli tanks were shelling targets just east of the city near the Egyptian border, medics and witnesses said.

The Israeli military said in an update on Friday its forces had destroyed a Hamas command and control hub in Gaza City’s Sheijaia district, conducted a “targeted raid” on militant infrastructure in Khan Younis, and bombed sites in the Rafah area that helped Hamas to smuggle weapons into Gaza.

The heavy fighting, confirmed by many residents and militant sources reached by Reuters, raised questions about whether Israel’s two-month-long aerial and ground blitz of Gaza has significantly weakened Hamas, which it has vowed to annihilate.

“The Gaza Strip turned into a ball of fire overnight, we could hear explosions and gunshots echoing from all directions,” Ahmed, 45, an electrician and father of six, told Reuters from a shelter in a central area of the densely populated enclave.

“They can destroy homes and roads and kill civilians from the air or through blind tank shelling, but when they come face to face with the resistance, they lose. We don’t have anything to lose after all they had done to our Gaza,” he said. Unrelenting Israeli bombardment has laid much of the narrow coastal strip to waste over the past two months, with nearly 19,000 people confirmed dead, according to Palestinian health officials, and thousands more feared buried under the rubble.

Israel launched its onslaught in retaliation for a surprise cross-border rampage by Hamas, the Iran-backed group that rules Gaza, whose fighters stormed nearby Israeli communities, killed 1,200 people and seized 240 hostages on October 7.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told visiting US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan on Thursday that Israel would be at war with Hamas “until absolute victory”.