Gaza Death Count Crosses 18,000 As Battles Rage

Heavy urban battles raged Monday in the bloodiest-ever war in Gaza, with more than 18,200 Palestinians and 104 Israeli soldiers reported dead amid a spiralling humanitarian crisis.

The war was triggered by Hamas's October 7 attacks that killed some 1,200 people in southern Israel and saw dozens of hostages dragged back to Gaza.

It has warned the remaining 137 hostages won't survive unless Israel meets its demands and frees more Palestinian prisoners.

Brutal fighting continued in Gaza, with Islamic Jihad militants saying they blew up a house in the southern Gazan city of Khan Yunis where Israeli soldiers were searching for a tunnel shaft.

Rockets fired from Gaza hit Holon on the edge of Tel Aviv, injuring a civilian and leaving a crater in a residential street.

Live AFPTV images showed a volcanic-like cloud of grey smoke rising after an explosion in central Gaza, while AFP correspondents reported explosions that shook several urban areas.

Israel had urged civilians to seek refuge in the far south, but the army has kept striking targets throughout the territory.

Umm Mohammed al-Jabri lost seven children in an air strike on Rafah, near Egypt, after fleeing there from Gaza City.

"I have four children left," said Jabri, 56. "Last night they bombed the house we were in and destroyed it. They said Rafah would be a safe place. There is no safe place."

The last death count from the Hamas-run health ministry was 18,205, mostly women and children.

'Physical, sexual abuse'

In an Israeli psychiatric ward, doctors treating ex-hostages said many were drugged by Hamas to keep them docile in captivity, and suffered psychological and sexual abuse.

One was told his wife was dead when she was still alive back in Israel, and others were held in total darkness for more than four days, said Renana Eitan, director of the psychiatric division of Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Centre-Ichilov.

"The physical, the sexual, the mental, the psychological abuse of these hostages that came back is just terrible," she told AFP. "We have to rewrite the textbook."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called on Hamas to "surrender now", with his government claiming thousands of operatives have been killed during the war, now in its third month.

The army said 500 operatives have been arrested over the past month.

Much of Gaza has been reduced to rubble by the offensive, and the UN estimates 1.9 million of its 2.4 million people have been displaced. Roughly half are children.

Amid growing pressure over the humanitarian conditions, Israel announced it would be screening aid to Gaza at two additional checkpoints, which would allow more assistance to enter the ravaged strip.

The EU's top diplomat Josep Borrell said in a speech that the "apocalyptic" destruction was proportionally "even greater" than that experienced by Germany in World War II.

Health services have been devastated, with only 14 of Gaza's 36 hospitals functioning at any capacity, according to UN humanitarian agency OCHA.

Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah was inundated with victims Monday, including dozens of screaming children, after Israeli strikes on the nearby Al-Maghazi refugee camp.

Elsewhere, as basic supplies run out and sanitary conditions deteriorate, women and girls spoke of using scraps of cloth for menstrual periods.

"I cut up my kid's clothes or any piece of cloth I find," said 25-year-old Hala Ataya in Rafah.

Unable to obtain gas or even firewood for cooking, Gazans brought decades-old brass stoves to a workshop for repair.

"People have gone back to the old times," owner Ibrahim Shouman said.

In Al-Rimal, thousands of Palestinians had set up camp at a UN agency headquarters after nearby homes and shops were destroyed by Israeli strikes.

An AFP correspondent said both the Islamic and adjacent Al-Azhar universities had been reduced to rubble, as had the police station.

"There is no water. There is no electricity, no bread, no milk for the children, and no diapers," said Rami al-Dahduh, 23, a tailor.

UN meeting

The UN General Assembly will meet Tuesday to discuss the humanitarian crisis, after the United States last week vetoed a Security Council resolution for a ceasefire.

A group of Security Council ambassadors travelled to Egypt to meet Gazan victims on an informal trip.

"I just met a young mother who lost a kid and has another little girl who is wounded," Ecuador's envoy Jose de la Gasca told AFP. "I dont ever want to see again what I have just seen."

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Lebanon, a general strike in solidarity with Gaza saw shops, schools and government offices closed.

Elsewhere in the region, the war has encouraged Iran-backed groups to target US and allied forces in Iraq and Syria, with fresh attacks reported Monday.

Israeli bombardment killed an official in south Lebanon, the National News Agency said, amid near-daily cross-border exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah.

Israeli strikes late Sunday near Damascus killed four people linked to Hezbollah, a Britain-based war monitor said.

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