UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has added Israel's military to a global list of offenders for committing violations against children in 2023.

Israel's UN envoy Gilad Erdan said he was officially notified of the decision Friday. The global list is included in a report on children and armed conflict that Guterres is due to submit to the UN Security Council on June 14.

It covers six violations — killing and maiming, sexual violence, abduction, recruitment and use of children, denial of aid access and attacks of schools and hospitals. Israel has long had contentious relationship with the UN that has only worsened during the Israeli war on Gaza.

The UN said last month that at least 7,797 children have been killed in Hamas-ruled Gaza during the eight-month-long war, citing data on identified bodies from Gaza's Ministry of Health, which the UN considers reliable. The Gaza government media office says in total some 15,500 children have been killed.

UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Guterres' chief of staff called Erdan on Friday as "courtesy afforded to countries that are newly listed on the annex of the report." Erdan posted a video on social media of him responding during the phone call.

Dujarric described the video and its partial release as "shocking and unacceptable and frankly something I've never seen in my 24 years serving this organisation." The report is compiled by Virginia Gamba, Guterres' special representative for children and armed conflict. The list attached to the report aims to shame parties to conflicts in the hope of pushing them to implement measures to protect children.

The list is split into two: parties that have put in place measures to protect children and parties that have not. Erdan said he was told Israel had been included on the list of parties that had not put in place adequate measures to protect children.

Israel's invasion and bombardment of Gaza since then has killed at least 36,731 people, including 77 in the past 24 hours, Gaza's health ministry said in an update yesterday. Thousands more are feared buried dead under rubble, with most of the 2.3mn population displaced.

A spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the UN decision was "a step in the right direction towards holding Israel accountable for its crimes" and that Israel should have been added long ago.

Meanwhile, with a renewed ceasefire push in the eight-month-old Gaza war stalled, Israel bombarded central and southern areas again Friday, killing at least 28 Palestinians, and tank forces advanced to the western edges of Rafah.

Qatari and Egyptian mediators have tried again this week to reconcile clashing demands preventing a halt to the hostilities, a release of Israeli hostages and Palestinians jailed in Israel, and an unrestricted flow of aid into Gaza to alleviate a humanitarian disaster. But sources close to the talks said there were still no signs of a breakthrough.

Gaza health officials said two Palestinians had been killed and several wounded in western Rafah from tank shelling there. In central Gaza, Palestinian medics said Israeli bombardments killed at least 15 people died overnight.

"I think the occupation forces are trying to reach the beach area of Rafah. The raids and the bombing overnight were tactical, they entered under heavy fire and then retreated," one Palestinian resident told Reuters via a chat app.

In north Gaza, three Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Gaza City school building that was sheltering displaced families, rescue workers said.