Gaza deaths pass 18,200 as battles rage

PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES — 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 toll from the Hamas-run health ministry was 18,205, mostly women and children. 

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 militants have