A United Nations inquiry has accused Israeli authorities and security forces of deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza, finding that the killing, maiming, starvation, displacement, detention, and deprivation of children formed part of a pattern that furthered Israel’s genocide against Palestinians.
The report, released by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, examined Israeli violations and crimes against Palestinian children from October 7, 2023, through March 31, 2026. Its findings reach far beyond casualty figures. The Commission concluded that Palestinian children were not simply caught in the devastation of Israel’s military campaign, but were repeatedly placed at the center of Israeli violence, military policy, deprivation, and dehumanizing rhetoric.
“The deliberate targeting of children is one of the key elements establishing genocidal intent of the Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the Palestinian group, in whole or in part, in Gaza,” the commission said.
Between the start of Israel’s military campaign in October 2023 and the October 2025 ceasefire agreement, the report found that more than 20,000 children were killed in Gaza and more than 44,000 were injured. Children accounted for about 30 percent of those killed and 26 percent of those injured. More than 5,000 of the children killed were under the age of five, more than 1,000 were under the age of one, and more than 400 were newborn babies.
The Commission said the true number of dead and injured children is likely higher, with unknown numbers buried under rubble, missing, or buried in unmarked graves. It also noted that the proportion of children killed was higher than in previous major Israeli military escalations in Gaza.
The report’s methodology drew on interviews with victims, witnesses, children, medical workers, journalists, lawyers, and other sources, as well as medical records, photographs, videos, CT scans, x-rays, forensic analysis, and verified open-source material. The Commission said it sent 13 requests for information or access to the Government of Israel and received no response.
The inquiry also noted that it had previously documented crimes committed by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups against Israeli children on and after October 7, 2023, including killings, injuries, abductions, emotional mistreatment, and the filming of children for propaganda purposes. In those earlier findings, the Commission concluded that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including against Israeli children and child hostages.
But in the new report, the Commission’s focus is the scale and character of Israeli violence against Palestinian children. Its findings describe a sustained military campaign in which children were killed in airstrikes, shot by snipers, wounded by quadcopters, detained with adults, deprived of medical care, forced from their homes, and denied access to schools, hospitals, food, water, and shelter.
The report cites Israel’s use of explosive weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated neighborhoods as a major cause of child casualties. Israeli airstrikes repeatedly wiped out entire families, sometimes across multiple generations. The Commission argued that the deaths of children in such attacks were not unexpected battlefield accidents, but the foreseeable result of using high-payload weapons in residential areas where Israeli forces knew children were present.
In one case cited in the report, two Israeli airstrikes hit a residential home in Khan Younis on May 23, 2025, killing nine of 10 children in one family and their father. Both parents were doctors. The family’s only surviving child, an 11-year-old boy, was critically injured and medically evacuated with his mother.
The Commission also documented cases in which children were directly shot. Medical professionals told investigators they treated children with direct gunshot and sniper wounds, often to the head and abdomen. In a sample of 168 children shot between November 2023 and July 2025, at least 88 were killed. At least 73 were shot in the head and 22 in the chest.
“Based on the clustering of injuries and the targeted body parts, I assess that the Israeli soldiers have been deliberately shooting teenage boys in a game of target practice—a different body part being targeted on different days… There is a very clear pattern that suggests this is a deliberate aiming of different body parts [of children],” one doctor told the commission.
Among the cases investigated was the killing of 5-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab, members of her family, and two Palestine Red Crescent Society paramedics who attempted to rescue her in Tel al-Hawa in January 2024. The Commission found that Israeli forces were present near the family’s vehicle, contrary to Israel’s reported denial, and concluded that the Israeli security forces’ 401st Brigade, under the 162nd Division, deliberately targeted the car while knowing children were inside and obstructed medical rescue by shelling the ambulance.
The report also described the shooting of a 15-year-old boy holding a white cloth as his family prepared to evacuate Khan Younis in January 2024. He was shot in the foot, then in the back and neck. When his 20-year-old brother tried to reach him, he was shot in the chest. The Commission assessed that the Israeli shooter should have been able to see that the target was a child holding a white flag.
In April 2024, a 10-day-old baby was shot in the head by a quadcopter while being breastfed inside a tent in Nuseirat camp. The baby survived but sustained brain injuries and seizures. In August 2024, a four-year-old girl was shot in the head while eating with her family inside a tent in Khan Younis. She survived with paralysis on the left side of her body. The Commission concluded in both cases that the children were targeted.
The report also found that children continued to be killed after the October 2025 ceasefire agreement. UNICEF reported that, as of mid-January 2026, more than 100 children had been killed since early October 2025. Many were shot near the so-called “yellow line,” a demarcation area inside Gaza controlled by Israeli forces. The Commission said the line was unclear, shifting, and dangerous for civilians, especially children.
On November 29, 2025, two brothers, ages 10 and nine, were killed by an Israeli drone strike near Bani Suheila while gathering firewood for their wheelchair-bound father. Israeli forces described the boys as “suspects” who had crossed the yellow line and posed an immediate threat. The Commission rejected that framing, saying the children were more than 300 meters from Israeli soldiers and were clearly collecting firewood.
The report devotes significant attention to the destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system and the consequences for children and newborns. Gaza’s three major pediatric hospitals, Al-Nasr Pediatric Hospital, Al-Durra Pediatric Hospital, and Al-Rantisi Specialized Pediatric Hospital, were forced to close in the first two months of hostilities. Al-Nasr was attacked at least three times in November 2023. When electricity was cut, one baby died from lack of oxygen and eight others were put at risk. Four premature babies were later found dead and decomposing in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, still attached to life-support equipment that had stopped functioning.
The Commission also found severe consequences for pregnancy, birth, and newborn survival. In the first half of 2025, Gaza recorded 17,000 live births, a 41 percent decline from the same period in 2022. During that same period, 2,600 pregnancies ended in miscarriage, 220 resulted in intrauterine fetal deaths, and 21 newborns died within 24 hours of birth. By March 2026, one in three pregnancies was classified as high-risk.
Medical workers reported increasing numbers of premature and underweight babies, congenital defects, and neonatal deaths linked to the collapse of maternal and newborn care. Prior to October 2023, Gaza had eight neonatal intensive care units with 178 incubators. By November 2024, three neonatal intensive care units in northern Gaza had been destroyed and the number of incubators was reduced to 54.
“There is a direct targeting by Israel to affect the long-term health outcomes of babies. There is no reason why we cannot bring medications into Gaza to help pregnant women and babies, so it makes no sense except to think that this particular group is being targeted due to which there is a higher mortality rate among newborns,” an emergency room and pediatric nurse told the Commission.
The report also detailed the mass maiming of children. UNICEF reported that more than 1,000 children had one or more limbs amputated within the first three months of Israel’s attacks. Gaza’s Ministry of Health recorded about 846 child amputation cases as of April 2025. Doctors told the Commission that child amputees often require eight to 12 surgeries before adulthood, but Gaza’s destroyed health system cannot provide that level of care.
The destruction of schools also forms a central part of the report. Between October 7, 2023, and October 11, 2025, 459 of Gaza’s 564 school buildings were directly hit. Those buildings had served nearly 500,000 students and more than 18,000 teachers before the war. By November 2025, more than 97 percent of schools in Gaza were damaged or destroyed, and 93 percent required major rehabilitation or full reconstruction to function again.
The Commission found that more than 668,000 school-aged children in Gaza had been denied formal education, while children under five faced severe developmental risks due to the collapse of early childhood services. Children in Gaza have missed three years of formal schooling.
“When children lose their chance to access education, they lose their future,” a teacher told the Commission.
The collapse of care networks has also left tens of thousands of children orphaned or separated from their families. Between October 2023 and October 2025, an estimated 58,554 children lost one or both parents, while between 17,000 and 18,000 children were unaccompanied or separated from their parents. Medical staff at Al-Shifa Hospital coined the term “Wounded Child No Surviving Family” to describe injured children who arrived alone.
The report also examined arrests and detention. Since October 2023, more than 1,655 children were detained in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. As of December 31, 2025, 51 percent of 351 Palestinian child detainees were held under administrative detention, meaning detention without charge. The Commission found that Israeli forces singled out boys as young as 12 during mass arrests in Gaza and treated them as suspected members of armed groups.
Children described beatings, shackling, sleep deprivation, denial of food and water, dogs released on detainees, and torture. The Commission also documented forced public nudity, stripping, filming, sexualized humiliation, and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinian children during arrests and detention.
In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Israeli forces killed 213 Palestinian children between October 7, 2023, and October 20, 2025. The Commission found that boys were disproportionately targeted because they were perceived as “terrorists” or “future terrorists.” Settler violence also intensified, with Palestinian children abducted, beaten, sexually assaulted, and attacked while herding animals, walking to school, or playing near their homes.
The Commission linked this violence to a pattern of dehumanizing rhetoric by Israeli officials. On October 9, 2023, Deputy Knesset Speaker Nissim Vaturi posted: “Erase Gaza. Nothing else will satisfy us. It is not acceptable that we maintain a terrorist authority next to Israel. Do not leave a child there expel all the remaining ones at the end, so that they will not have a resurrection.” In January 2025, he said, “Gaza is full of terrorists and every child born there is already a terrorist, from the moment of his birth.”
Israel rejected the Commission’s findings, calling the report a “second defamatory advocacy report” and a “libelous sham.” It said that while “every child deserves protection,” the report ignored “the brutal tactics of Hamas.”
The Commission concluded that Israeli authorities and security forces continued to commit genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Gaza, as well as war crimes in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. It called for an immediate halt to Israeli military operations in Gaza, an end to the use of high-impact weapons in residential areas, the release of accurate data on child detainees, accountability for those responsible for crimes against children, and international measures including sanctions and restrictions on military-related trade.
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