Gaza live: Palestinian death toll passes 37,000 after brutal Israeli attack on Nuseirat

At least 80 Palestinians have been killed by Israel's operation in central Gaza on Saturday, and dozens more wounded, according to Al Jazeera.

Mohammed al-Hajjar, MEE's reporter in central Gaza, spoke to Nidal Abdo, who was in Nuseirat camp and witnessed Israel's military operation. 

"The occupation has annihilated the Nuseirat refugee camp. Innocent and unarmed civilian were bombed in their homes. I've never seen anything like this. It's a catastrophe," Abdo told MEE.

"I came from the camp to here in [Al-Aqsa Martyrs] hospital on foot. I can't describe how we fled. I saw dead children and body parts strewn all over as we fled. No one was able to assist them. I saw an elderly man killed on an animal-drawn cart. Nuseirat was being annihilated. It was hell."

The Israeli military has announced the rescue of four captives from Gaza during an operation in Nuseirat.

Those rescued were named as Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv.

Those rescued, who were reportedly in good health, were taken to Tel Hashomer hospital for further evaluation.

The Gaza government media office has accused Israel of a "barbaric and brutal aggression" in central Gaza following air strikes that left dozens dead and wounded.

In a statement, the office held both Israel and the US responsible for the killings and said that they were running out of medical resources.

"Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital is the only hospital in the Central Governorate and is currently working on only one electric generator after the breakdown of one of the two generators that the hospital has been operating for eight months," said the statement.

"If one of these two generators stops, it portends a real disaster if the only generator stops, and thus the hospital may be out of service. This hospital provides health service to a million people and displaced persons, and it cannot accommodate this large number of martyrs and injuries."

The statement said there were dozens of bodies of martyrs and wounded lying "on the ground, in the streets, and inside safe houses, and ambulances and civil defense cannot reach the places due to the intensity of the bombing and aggression".

The Israeli army called Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital's administration and threatened to bomb the hospital if it was not evacuated, the spokesperson of the government media office in Gaza has told Al Arabi TV.

The spokesperson added that Israeli special forces infiltrated the market in Nuseirat camp.

Staff at Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital have told Al-Jazeera that the initial death toll in central Gaza was 15 with dozens more wounded. The numbers are likely to rise.

The Palestinian health ministry confirmed that a large number of dead and wounded Palestinian have arrived at Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital. It said that most of them were children and women. 

The ministry added that dozens of injured people were "lying on the ground", and medical teams were trying to save them with "whatever capabilities available". 

Middle East Eye's Mohammed al-Hajjar is at the scene now at Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in central Gaza. 

He says that a large number of people killed and wounded have arrived at the facility in the past hour. Many of them are children and women.

Some of the heavy Israeli bombing took place in houses near to the hospital, Hajjar reports.

In addition, people sheltering in the hospital are now being phoned by Israeli forces telling them to leave the facility.

The Israeli military has said in a statement that it has been striking "terror infrastructure" in Nuseirat refugee camp, central Gaza, for the past hour. 

The statement gave no further details. 

Israeli forces are heavily bombarding Nuseirat and Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.

A large number of dead and wounded arrived at Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital on Saturday. 

Al-Jazeera reporter Hind Khoudary, who is in Deir al-Balah, said: "There are explosions happening every minute. Ambulances are transferring the wounded to the hospital where we are trapped. It's chaos inside the hospital. There are children among the wounded.

"We can hear artillery shelling. No one knows what's happening outside but we know that over a million people have evacuated Rafah for central Gaza and there are hundreds of thousands on the streets, terrified and horrified. They don't know where to go."

Israel's war on Gaza has ravaged the Palestinian economy, according to new analysis by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

The war has caused a sharp decline in GDP and mass job losses, according to the analysis.

The unemployment rate in the Gaza Strip has reached 79 percent, while in the occupied West Bank it has reached 32 percent.

That brings the average rate of unemployment to 50.8 percent across the two areas of occupied Palestine. 

Additionally, real GDP has contracted by 83.5 percent in Gaza and by 22.7 percent in the West Bank over the past eight months, according to the report.

Gilbert Houngbo, director-general of the ILO, said: "This has been the hardest year for Palestinian workers since 1967. Never before has the situation been this bleak."

Houngbo said an estimated 200,000 jobs had been lost in Gaza since October: the equivalent of more than two-thirds of total employment in the enclave.

A Palestinian man has been shot dead by Israeli forces in Tulkarm, in the occupied West Bank, according to Wafa news agency.

Moamen Omar Abu Asal, 22, was shot by security forces in the town of Anabta, east of Tulkarm.

He was taken to Thabet Thabet Governmental Hospital, where he died from his wounds and was pronounced dead by the Palestinian health ministry.

Local sources told Wafa that Israeli vehicles stormed the town from a military checkpoint, roamed its main streets and firing randomly in the area, wounding and killing Abu Asal.

Two siblings and a previously freed Palestinian detainee were detained during the raid, after their homes were ransacked.

Good evening Middle East Eye readers. 

Our live coverage will soon be closing for the day.

Here are the today's main developments:

- Israeli strikes on central Gaza have killed at least 11 Palestinians, six of them in Maghazi and five in Nuseirat

- The White House said that it was still waiting for an official response from Hamas to the latest ceasefire proposal

- Unemployment nears 80% in Gaza, the UN's International Labour Organisation said in a report

- Israel was added to the UN "blacklist" of parties that harm children in conflict

- Yemen's Houthis have in the past 24 hours launched four anti-ship ballistic missiles

- The US said it has re-established the temporary aid pier in Gaza

- Demonstrators at Germany's embassy in Tel Aviv called for the German government to halt arms exports to Israel

The United Nations has placed Israel on a blacklist of countries that have committed abuses against children, after Israeli forces killed thousands of Palestinian children in its ongoing war on Gaza.

The placement of Israel was confirmed by Israel's ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, who said on X that he received the notification and was outraged at the move. He also shared on the social media platform a recording of the call in which he received the news from a UN official.

"This is simply outrageous and wrong," Erdan said.

"I responded to the shameful decision and said that our army is the most moral in the world. The only one being blacklisted is the secretary general who incentivises and encourages terrorism and is motivated by hatred towards Israel."

Stephane Dujarric, a spokesperson for the UN secretary general, said during a press briefing on Friday that a UN official called the Israeli ambassador to inform him of the listing as "a courtesy afforded to countries that are newly listed" in the UN's annual "Children in Armed Conflict" report.

"It is done to give those countries a heads-up and avoid leaks," Dujarric told reporters.

That report will be presented to the UN Security Council on 14 June. Reuters reported citing a UN official that the Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad would also be added to the list.

Read more here: Israel added to UN 'blacklist' of parties that harm children in conflict

US President Joe Biden's administration is weighing a plan to bring cooperation with the Palestinian Authority's security forces under the purview of Centcom, a potential reshuffle that some US officials say could advance plans for post-war Gaza governance.

US officials advocating for the move argue it would bolster cooperation between the Palestinian Authority's (PA) security forces and Arab states, one current US official, one former US official and one Western official familiar with the plan told Middle East Eye.

Proponents of the idea cite the US decision to place Israel under the responsibility of Centcom in 2021. The decision to link Israel with the US’s overall military command for the Middle East was intended to better integrate Israel with the US's Arab allies and deepen intelligence sharing.

Read more: US weighs plan for Centcom to coordinate directly with Palestinian Authority's security forces

The White House said on Friday that it was still waiting for an official response from Hamas to the latest ceasefire proposal for the war on Gaza.

The issue is scheduled to be discussed during a meeting between Biden and French President Macron on Saturday.

Last week, Biden presented what he labelled an Israeli "three-phase plan" that would end the war, free all captives and lead to the reconstruction of Gaza without Hamas in power.

Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan said on Thursday that the proposed ceasefire deal was “just words” and that Hamas had not received any written commitments related to a truce.