Israel deliberately targeted Palestinian children, committed genocide, says UN inquiry

Key findings

Around 30% of those killed in the Gaza war were children, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry found, with at least 20,179 Palestinian children killed between 7 October 2023 and the October 2025 ceasefire. The proportion exceeds that of previous Gaza conflicts, where child fatalities were approximately 24%.

2008–09 & 2014 conflicts24%

Oct 2023 – Oct 202530%

2008–09 & 2014 conflicts

24 %

Oct 2023 – Oct 2025

30 %

Data from the article text

“The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces.”

Israeli forces continued to use high-payload munitions and weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated residential areas despite mounting child casualties, the commission said, calling the attacks intentional. It concluded that targeting children was part of a strategy to destroy the future of Palestinians in Gaza.

The report also documented killings of children in the occupied West Bank, which it classified as war crimes. Palestinian children, especially teenage boys, were arrested, tortured and ill-treated in Israeli prisons. Sexual and gender-based violence against children was recorded, often during arrest or in detention. Attacks on maternity and paediatric hospitals systematically destroyed children’s access to life-sustaining care.

Israel's response

“Israel dismisses this libelous sham.”

Israel’s foreign ministry “completely rejects” the report, calling it a “defamatory farce” and “a propaganda piece as outrageous as the previous ones”. It said the commission was a fundamentally flawed mechanism designed to single out and vilify Israel, and that the report ignored Hamas’s brutal tactics, including the murder and kidnapping of Israeli children on 7 October 2023.

Background and timeline

The commission was created by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021 to investigate alleged violations of international law in the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel. It previously found that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes on 7 October 2023, and that Israeli security forces committed crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza. In September 2025, the same commission accused Israel of genocide against Palestinians.

Continued violence after ceasefire

The report stressed that killings of Palestinian children continued after the ceasefire brokered in October 2025 under a US plan. "Even after the October 2025 cease-fire, children continue to be killed and seriously injured, with continued disregard by Israel for the cease-fire," Muralidhar said. The commission viewed the post-truce deaths as a key element establishing genocidal intent to destroy the Palestinian group in whole or in part.

According to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures the UN considers reliable, more than 73,000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks, including over 21,280 children. The commission identified deliberate targeting through precision weapons such as quadcopter drones and snipers, as well as heavy munitions on homes, schools and displacement camps crowded with children.