A newly released international monitoring report has identified Israeli armed forces as responsible for the majority of civilian deaths caused by explosive weapons worldwide in 2025, placing the wars in Gaza and Lebanon at the center of a broader global crisis that researchers say is normalizing mass civilian suffering.
According to the Explosive Weapons Monitor 2025, at least 22,616 civilians were killed by explosive weapons across 65 countries, territories, and maritime locations last year. Although that figure represents a 21 percent decline from 2024 levels, researchers caution that the reduction was driven largely by ceasefires that temporarily reduced fighting in Palestine and Lebanon rather than by any meaningful shift away from the use of explosive weapons in populated areas.
The report found that 56 percent of all recorded civilian fatalities from explosive weapons in 2025 were attributed to Israeli armed forces, with the overwhelming majority occurring in Palestine.
The findings come from the Explosive Weapons Monitor, a research initiative of the International Network on Explosive Weapons, a coalition whose members include Action on Armed Violence, Center for Civilians in Conflict, Human Rights Watch, Humanity & Inclusion, PAX, and Save the Children. The report draws on data from Armed Conflict Location & Event Data and Insecurity Insight to track civilian harm from explosive weapons around the world.
While Israel accounted for most civilian fatalities recorded in the report, researchers stressed that the problem extends across numerous conflicts and continents. Civilian harm from explosive weapons was documented in at least 65 countries and territories, with particularly severe impacts reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Myanmar, Palestine, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen.
One of the report’s most significant findings concerns who is responsible for the harm. State militarism, rather than non-state armed groups, accounted for the overwhelming majority of incidents affecting civilians and civilian infrastructure.
According to the report, armed forces from 29 countries were responsible for more than 17,180 incidents affecting civilians or civilian infrastructure in 2025. By comparison, more than 3,090 incidents were attributed to non-state actors. Overall, state armed forces were responsible for 85 percent of all incidents in which civilians or civilian infrastructure were reportedly affected by explosive weapons.
Researchers also found that air-delivered weapons remained the dominant source of civilian harm. Approximately 67 percent of incidents affecting civilians involved air-launched explosive weapons, compared with 20 percent involving ground-launched systems and 13 percent involving directly emplaced explosives.
Beyond the death toll, the report paints a picture of systematic damage to the infrastructure that sustains civilian life.
Attacks involving humanitarian aid operations, aid workers, and camps increased by 52 percent during 2025. The report notes that incidents were documented in 17 countries and territories, with roughly 90 percent recorded in Palestine.
The findings suggest that humanitarian organizations are increasingly operating under direct threat in conflict zones, complicating efforts to deliver food, shelter, medical care, and emergency assistance to vulnerable populations.
Educational institutions also faced escalating attacks. Researchers documented at least 1,416 incidents involving explosive weapons that damaged or destroyed educational facilities or killed students and teachers across 27 countries and territories. Attacks on education increased by 64 percent compared with the previous year.
Healthcare systems faced similar pressures. The report recorded at least 1,272 incidents in which explosive weapons damaged hospitals, clinics, ambulances, or resulted in the deaths of healthcare workers. Nearly 90 percent of those incidents occurred in four locations: Lebanon, Myanmar, Palestine, and Ukraine.
Food and water infrastructure also remained frequent targets of explosive violence. Researchers documented at least 1,082 incidents affecting communities’ ability to access or produce food, as well as 87 incidents involving damage to water distribution networks, water storage facilities, and water transportation systems.
The cumulative effect of such attacks extends far beyond immediate casualties, according to humanitarian organizations that contributed to the report.
“Every destroyed school, hospital, market, water system, or humanitarian convoy represents far more than damaged infrastructure—it represents opportunities lost, futures disrupted, and communities pushed further from recovery,” said Alma Taslidžan, Humanity & Inclusion’s disarmament advocacy manager.
Taslidžan emphasized that the consequences of explosive weapons often continue long after active fighting subsides.
“Long after the explosions end, civilians continue to live with the consequences of disrupted healthcare, interrupted education, damaged livelihoods, and the daily challenge of rebuilding their lives,” she said. “For many, the consequences of explosive weapons become part of everyday life and suffering for years to come.”
The report argues that these patterns of harm are not inevitable. Researchers contend that civilian casualties from explosive weapons remain both foreseeable and preventable, particularly when such weapons are used in densely populated areas.
“The devastating impact of explosive weapons on civilians is both foreseeable and preventable. Yet across numerous conflicts, their continued use has entrenched a pattern of civilian harm that is increasingly treated as routine rather than exceptional,” said Katherine Young, the report’s lead author and research and monitoring manager for the Explosive Weapons Monitor.
Young warned that repeated exposure to large-scale civilian casualties risks changing how governments and the international community view war itself.
“When explosive weapons are used in populated areas, civilians suffer,” Young said. “What is particularly alarming is that this harm has become persistent across conflicts worldwide, risking the normalization of civilian suffering on a massive scale.”
The report places particular emphasis on the 2022 Political Declaration on Strengthening the Protection of Civilians from the Humanitarian Consequences Arising From the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas. Researchers describe implementation of the declaration as a critical humanitarian priority and call on governments to adopt policies that place stricter limits on the use of explosive weapons where civilians are present.
At the same time, the report identifies eight countries that endorsed the declaration but whose armed forces were reportedly responsible for civilian harm from explosive weapons in 2025: Cambodia, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Somalia, the Republic of Korea, Türkiye, and the United States.
The report’s release comes amid continuing violence in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and Lebanon.
On Wednesday, Edouard Beigbeder, UNICEF’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, highlighted the continued toll on children in the occupied Palestinian territories. According to Beigbeder, eight children were reported killed and 17 others injured in five separate locations across Gaza during the weekend. He also noted that a 7-month-old boy died after reportedly being shot by Israeli forces in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
“We cannot let this become the new normal—children losing their lives to violence should cause global outrage and must be condemned at every level,” said Beigbeder. “UNICEF calls on the Israeli authorities to take decisive action to protect all Palestinian children. Authorities must ensure transparent, credible, and robust investigations, as well as accountability whenever children are killed or maimed.”
According to figures cited in the source material, at least 72,991 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. Local health officials report that 981 of those deaths occurred after a ceasefire reached last October. In Lebanon, the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health reports that at least 3,666 people have been killed in Israeli attacks since early March.
Taken together, the findings in the Explosive Weapons Monitor suggest that while global civilian fatalities from explosive weapons declined in 2025, the underlying drivers of civilian harm remain deeply entrenched. Researchers warn that without stronger restrictions on the use of explosive weapons in populated areas and greater accountability for attacks affecting civilians and civilian infrastructure, the extraordinary levels of harm documented over the past three years risk becoming a permanent feature of modern warfare.
“What is particularly alarming is that this harm has become persistent across conflicts worldwide, risking the normalization of civilian suffering on a massive scale.”
COMMENTS