Israeli bombardment martyrs 300 more Palestinians, toll surpasses 18,000
GAZA, Palestine (AFP) - Heavy urban battles raged Monday in the bloodiest-ever Gaza war which has killed 101 Israeli soldiers and around 18,000 Palestinians, according to the latest death tolls, amid a spiralling humanitarian crisis.
The Hamas-run health ministry said Monday that dozens more people had been martyred, adding to its latest death toll of 17,997, mostly women and children.
Hamas, which started the war with its October 7 attacks that killed around 1,200 people in southern Israel, warned the remaining 137 hostages it holds won't survive unless Israel meets its demands and frees more Palestinian prisoners.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the Islamist group to "surrender now", after his national security adviser claimed thousands of militants have been killed during the war which is now in its third month. "It is the beginning of the end of Hamas. I say to the Hamas terrorists: It's over," he said on Sunday.
The militants responded with more rocket fire towards Israel. Israeli police on Monday reported "multiple impact sites of rocket fragments" in Holon, on the edge of Tel Aviv. They said a civilian was lightly wounded.
The blast left a crater in a residential street, damaged cars and shattered windows. More air strikes poured down on the biggest southern city of Khan Yunis overnight Sunday-Monday, AFP correspondents reported, while deadly fighting and bombing shook central and northern urban areas of Gaza.
Islamic Jihad militants said they had blown up a house in Khan Yunis where Israeli soldiers were searching for a tunnel shaft. Israel's military released video footage that it said showed a transport plane dropping supplies by parachute to troops fighting in the Khan Yunis area.
Live AFPTV images of the central Gaza region showed a volcanic-like cloud of grey smoke rising after an explosion and automatic weapons fire.
Many Gazans have fled south but still cannot escape death. Air strikes that hit Rafah, near Egypt, killed seven of Umm Mohammed al-Jabri's children after the family fled there from Gaza City, she said.
"I have four children left out of 11," 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."
'Terrible human toll'
The ministry said 32 dead had arrived at Khan Yunis' Nasser hospital in the previous 24 hours. It added that dozens had also been killed in the central Nuseirat and Maghazi areas, as well as Gaza City and Jabalia in the north.
Israel says 137 captives remain in Gaza after a week-long ceasefire late last month saw an exchange of hostages and Palestinian prisoners. Hamas on Sunday warned that Israel would not receive "their prisoners alive without an exchange and negotiation and meeting the demands of the resistance", including the release of more prisoners from Israeli jails.
The UN General Assembly was to meet Tuesday to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, officials and diplomats said, after the United States last week vetoed a Security Council resolution for a ceasefire. The UN estimates 1.9 million of Gaza's 2.4 million people have been displaced. Roughly half of them are children.
Israel had urged civilians to seek refuge in Gaza's far south, but the army has kept striking targets throughout the territory. The army has published complex maps that break up Gaza into hundreds of ostensibly safe and unsafe areas, but Palestinians say these are confusing and hard to access amid power and telecom outages. Lynn Hastings, UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, condemned the mapping software as inadequate.
