Israel's targeting of Gaza's children proves genocidal intent, UN inquiry finds
Children have been killed directly through military attacks and indirectly through the destruction of schools and hospitals, starvation and the collapse of essential services, the report said.
The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, mandated by the UN, said it had found "reasonable grounds" to conclude that Israel was committing genocide.
The commission said Israel's actions have left a generation physically and psychologically scarred, while undermining the ability of Palestinians to survive as a group.
The report, which was released this week and is around 100 pages long, documents what it describes as violations and crimes committed against Palestinian children in Gaza between 7 October, 2023 and 31 March, 2026.
More than 20,000 children were killed in Gaza between 7 October, 2023 and 7 October, 2025. More than 40,000 were wounded and more than 58,500 lost at least one parent or became orphans, the commission said.
Because children represent the future of a people, the commission argues, deliberately targeting them supports the conclusion that Israeli authorities intended to destroy Palestinians as a people in Gaza in whole or in part.
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'Maximum damage'
The commission said Israeli forces repeatedly bombed densely populated neighbourhoods, schools and crowded refugee camps while dismantling the systems children need to survive and develop.
It said 97 percent of schools were destroyed, 95 percent of universities were damaged, with 22 of Gaza's 38 universities completely destroyed.
It also accuses Israel of targeting maternity and neonatal services, contributing to miscarriages and birth defects, while starvation imposed by Israel killed children through malnutrition and caused long-term harm.
By 1 October, 2025, 151 children had died from malnutrition, it said.
"Israel is attacking the very ability of the Palestinian people to exist and determine their future by targeting children," commission chairman Srinivasan Muralidhar said.
The report said Israeli forces also deliberately targeted children using precision weapons.
The report cites evidence that it says shows children were shot in the head and upper body by quadcopter drones, other drones and sniper rifles "to inflict maximum damage".
Among the cases it documents is an incident in which a baby being breastfed inside a tent was shot in the head by a drone equipped with an infrared camera.
It also cites the widely reported killing of five-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab, who was trapped for hours in a car after members of her family were killed as she waited for rescuers to reach her.
"The severe physical and psychological injuries, collective trauma, orphanhood, separation, disability, repeated displacement, starvation and collapse of the education and healthcare systems have destroyed these children's childhoods and will continue to affect them throughout their lives in Gaza," the report said.
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Israeli denials
Israel rejected the findings, calling the report "defamatory" and a "slanderous masquerade".
The country's Foreign Ministry said the claims had not been verified and described the commission as "a fundamentally flawed mechanism whose very purpose is to single out and vilify Israel rather than seek the truth".
It accused the commission of ignoring "Hamas's brutal tactics, which ruthlessly target Israeli children and use Palestinian children as human shields".
Israel has also previously accused the commission of anti-Semitism and of acting as Hamas proxies.
The commission said its findings were based on evidence rather than allegations.
"We know who they are," commissioner Chris Sidoti said, referring to Israeli military divisions, brigades and units which the report identifies as potentially involved in incidents in which children were killed in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
'The reality behind the figures'
The commission said children have continued to be killed and seriously wounded despite the October 2025 ceasefire. Since the truce began, at least 265 children have been killed, an average of one each day.
"Raghad, a 17-year-old Unicef youth ambassador, was killed in Gaza on Monday while travelling to her final secondary school examination," Baptiste Chapuis, Unicef's advocacy and international programmes chief, told RFI.
For the children who survive, the damage can last a lifetime.
"Fear and violence have become so regular, so everyday and so constant that the trauma we see is no longer just an episode in their lives," Chapuis said.
"It is intrinsically linked to their daily reality and to the very fabric of their childhood. Everyday life is filled only with anxiety, fear, sleeplessness and the loss of loved ones. That is the reality behind the figures in this report."
Unicef spokesman James Elder emphasised the everyday circumstances in which children had been killed.
"These children were not killed in a war zone. They were killed in their homes. In their schools. While playing football. While fishing. They were shot, bombed and targeted by drones."
In eight months, more than 400 children have been wounded, with doctors treating brain haemorrhages and severe injuries to the head, chest and abdomen.
"The reality is that Palestinians continue to be killed and injured in Gaza even after the ceasefire announced last October, while the amount of humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza remains far below what is needed," Muralidhar said.
Child mortality remains high, many children are still waiting for emergency medical evacuation and medicines remain in critically short supply, the report said.
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Violence beyond Gaza
The commission also examined the treatment of children in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, where it said violence by Israeli settlers and soldiers against children has increased.
It said torture, sexual violence and deprivation of food during arrests and detention, mainly affecting boys, amount to crimes against humanity under international law.
More than half of Palestinian children held in Israeli prisons at the end of last year were being detained without charge or trial, the child rights NGO Defence for Children International said.
Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories rank first in the latest UN secretary-general's report on children in armed conflict, ahead of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The violations listed include killings, mutilations, sexual violence, deliberate obstruction of humanitarian access and attacks on hospitals and schools.
The report also said videos showing Israeli soldiers destroying and mocking children's toys raise "serious ethical, disciplinary and legal concerns", adding that they symbolise "the dehumanisation of Palestinian childhood itself".
Israel said its actions are justified by what it describes as a constant terrorist threat.
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Call to action
An earlier inquiry published in September last year concluded that genocide was taking place in Gaza, saying Israel had committed four of the five prohibited acts under the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Shortly afterwards, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said he saw "growing evidence" of genocide in Gaza.
As the occupying power, Israel has a legal duty to protect, care for and ensure the survival of Palestinian children, the commission said.
"Israeli authorities have violated every standard of international law in their treatment of Palestinian children, and they must be held accountable," Sidoti said.
The latest report concludes that much of the harm suffered by Palestinian children "was not incidental but intended to destroy the existence of Palestinians in Gaza as a group".
It calls on the international community, including France, to use all available diplomatic means to stop the violations, ensure those responsible are held accountable and guarantee unrestricted humanitarian access to Gaza.
"As long as these systematic violations continue, the killing and mutilation of children will continue without pause. Do we really believe that the life of a Palestinian child is worth less than that of a child from another country? What justifies such a double standard? Chapuis said.
"The scale of the violations of international humanitarian law and children's rights over the past two and a half years has been documented. No one will be able to say they did not know."