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GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- 60,000 Palestinians fled their homes in the neighborhood of Shujaiyya in Gaza City on Sunday amid an intense Israeli assault that left 66 residents dead and hundreds more injured.

Thousands of those who fled have sought refuge in the al-Shifa Hospital in North Rimal, a neighborhood in Gaza's west that many are hoping will not be bombed by Israeli forces.

Survivors of the assault recounted their experiences to a Ma'an reporter at the hospital.

One survivor said that the shells started falling on people's homes on Saturday evening, but because people had nowhere else to go they stayed put.

As dawn fell, however, the shelling intensified and people fled to the streets.

Iman Mansour, a woman who was staying at the hospital with her three injured children, said, "We left our houses forcibly because shells rained down on us."

"No one could reach the bodies of the martyrs or the injured people because of the continuous violent shelling on houses," she added.

Her husband Hamad Mansour said that the shelling was not as intense at sundown, "but with dawn, the random shelling began. Hundreds of shells hit homes, which led people to leave their houses running."

They all moved to the al-Shifa complex, he added.

Umm Wael Mansour, another survivor, told Ma'an: "I lived through the 1967 war, and other wars as well, but this one is indescribable. It's more difficult than the Sabra and Shatila massacres," she said, referencing the killings of thousands of Palestinians in Beirut by Israeli-supported militias during the Lebanese civil war.

"People who came to save us after a shell hit our home were killed on the street," she added, "and there were remains of the bodies of children, women, youth, and elderly on the ground."

She wondered why the houses of innocent people were targeted when there were no militants in them.

Umm Rafat Abu al-Qumeez, meanwhile, cried for her family whose bodies had not yet been recovered from the rubble.

She told Ma'an: "My children are under the rubble, send ambulances because people are dying in Shujaiyya."

A young child Qusai Abu al-Qumeez told Ma'an that he did not know what had happened to his father as he tearfully said, "Dad is at home. I am scared for him."