UN inquiry accuses Israel of targeting Gaza children

A United Nations commission of inquiry accused Israel of deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza, saying the acts amount to genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, allegations Israel rejected as a “libellous sham.”

In a report published Tuesday, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel said Israeli authorities and security forces had “deliberately carried out acts inflicting death and severe bodily and mental harm on hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children.” The commission said it had reasonable grounds to conclude the acts “form part of a deliberate strategy to destroy the future of the Palestinians in Gaza by targeting their children.”

The three-member expert panel, established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021, does not officially speak for the UN. It was mandated to investigate alleged violations of international humanitarian and human rights law and the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The report found that about 30% of those killed in Gaza since the start of the war were children. At least 73,035 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since the Israeli military launched its campaign after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures are seen as reliable by the UN. The BBC reported that the ministry’s toll includes more than 21,280 children. UNICEF has said more than 50,000 children have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces since the war began.

“The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces,” said Srinivasan Muralidhar, chair of the commission. “Even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children continue to be killed and seriously injured, with continued disregard by Israel for the ceasefire and for the protection owed to Palestinian children under international law.”

Israel and Hamas agreed last October to a ceasefire as part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war. Since then, both sides have accused each other of repeated violations. Gaza’s health ministry says more than 1,020 Palestinians have been killed since the truce, including 265 children, while the Israeli military says four soldiers have been killed.

The commission said Israel targeted children directly by shooting at vital organs with precision weapons, including quadcopter drones and sniper fire, and by using high-impact weapons in attacks on residential buildings, schools and displacement camps crowded with children. It also accused Israel of attacking neonatal, paediatric and maternity care facilities, saying those strikes endangered newborns and Palestinians’ reproductive future and contributed to miscarriages, birth defects and lasting vulnerabilities.

The report also said restrictions on humanitarian aid caused starvation-related deaths, acute and chronic malnutrition and increased disease among children as immunisation rates fell. It accused Israel of using starvation as a method of war. In the West Bank, the commission said Israeli forces had destroyed orphanages and education facilities, harming children’s cognitive, social and emotional development, and said Israel was legally responsible for failing to protect children from Israeli soldiers and settlers.

Children in Gaza and the West Bank, especially adolescent boys, have also been arrested, tortured and mistreated in Israeli prisons and detention facilities, the report said. It said the commission documented incidents of sexual and gender-based violence targeting Palestinian children, often during arrests or in detention.

“The protection, care and survival of Palestinian children are inseparable from the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination,” Muralidhar said. “By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future.”

Israel’s mission in Geneva dismissed the report as the commission’s “second defamatory advocacy report,” saying, “Israel dismisses this libelous sham.” Israel’s foreign ministry said it “utterly rejects” the findings, calling the commission a “fundamentally flawed mechanism” whose purpose is “to single out and vilify Israel rather than seek the truth.” It said the report ignored Hamas’ tactics and “completely erases Israeli children who were brutally murdered, kidnapped, and targeted by Hamas.”

Israel says its Gaza operations are acts of self-defence aimed at defeating Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups and securing the release of hostages. It says its forces operate in accordance with international law and take feasible measures to reduce civilian harm.

The commission previously accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza in a September 2025 report, saying there were reasonable grounds to conclude Israel had carried out four of the five acts defined as genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention. Israel strongly rejected that finding. The commission has also previously concluded that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes and other grave violations of international law in the Oct. 7 attack, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.