The bodies arrived through the night at the morgue of a hospital in Deir al-Balah in the centre of the Gaza Strip.

By Monday morning, hospital director Iyad al-Jabri had counted 58 dead, saying "dozens of women and children" may still be buried under the rubble.

Overnight, the skies over the Palestinian coastal territory were streaked with flashes of yellow and plumes of red.

When young Israeli Irene Shavit spoke to her mother after her first date with Netta Epstein, she said she was "already in love" but feared it could "end badly".

Shavit, 22, imagined that the romance, like so many others, might end in heartbreak.

Instead, it ended on October 7, when Epstein dived onto a Hamas grenade to save her life.

He was among the 1,400 people killed in the shock Hamas attack and its aftermath, according to Israeli authorities, most of them civilians who died on the first day.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi has begun a hunger strike in her Iranian prison in protest at limits on medical care for her and other inmates, as well as the obligation for women to wear the hijab in the Islamic republic, her family said on Monday.

Veteran rights activist Mohammadi, 51, currently held in Tehran's Evin prison, was awarded the Nobel prize in October "for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran".

In a convenience store in Bahrain, 14-year-old Jana Abdullah carries a tablet as she shops, checking a list of Western brands to avoid as Israel pounds Gaza in its campaign to destroy Hamas.

Jana and her 10-year-old brother, Ali, used to eat at McDonald's nearly daily but they are among many across the Middle East now boycotting products they believe support Israel.

With the campaign spreading on social media including TikTok, children as well as their parents are shunning major Western brands.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Monday that Israel will take control of "overall security" of besieged Gaza after the war, as the Hamas-run health ministry said the death toll has surged past 10,000.

Resisting calls for a ceasefire, Netanyahu said there would be no letup in the war to destroy Hamas, whose October 7 attack left 1,400 dead in Israel, most of them civilians.

The Israeli army said Monday it had arrested the prominent 22-year-old Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi during a raid in the occupied West Bank.

"Ahed Tamimi was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence and terrorist activities in the town of Nabi Salih" near the city of Ramallah, an army spokesman told AFP.

"Tamimi was transferred to Israeli security forces for further questioning."

Israel pounded Gaza with "significant" strikes Monday as soldiers battled Hamas forces in the besieged territory, ignoring ceasefire calls by UN aid agencies who condemned surging civilian deaths in the month-long conflict.

Israeli troops and Hamas fighters engaged in house-to-house combat in densely populated Gaza, where the war has sent 1.5 million people fleeing to other parts of the territory in a desperate search for cover.

Nestled in the mountains of northern Lebanon, a museum dedicated to Kahlil Gibran in his hometown of Bsharre has been celebrating the centennial of "The Prophet", the renowned author's most famous work.

Since it was first published in the United States in 1923, millions of copies of "The Prophet" have been sold worldwide, with the book becoming a literary classic that has been translated into dozens of languages from the original English.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday that Washington was working "very aggressively" to dramatically expand the amount of aid reaching trapped civilians in Gaza.

The top US diplomat held 2.5 hours of one-on-one talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan focused on soothing the anger at both Israel and the West of one of Washington's most strategic but difficult allies.

"Are there any survivors?" shouted Said al-Najma, as he tried to shift the blocks of concrete strewn across the road after another night of Israeli bombings that reduced houses to rubble.

Seven multi-storey buildings in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in the centre of the Gaza Strip were razed in the strikes on Saturday night, killing 45 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Among them are four of video-journalist Mohammed Alaloul's children, as well as four of his brothers, and several of his nieces and nephews.