A UN-mandated inquiry says Israel’s targeting of Palestinian children in Gaza amounts to genocide, an accusation Israel strongly rejects.
A UN-mandated commission of inquiry has accused Israeli authorities and security forces of deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza, saying the conduct amounts to genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Israel rejected the new report, calling it a “libellous sham.”
The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel said in a report published Tuesday that about 30% of those killed in the Gaza war have been children. The panel said it had reasonable grounds to conclude that Israeli actions “form part of a deliberate strategy to destroy the future of the Palestinians in Gaza by targeting their children.”
The three-member expert panel was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021 to investigate alleged violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, but it does not officially speak for the United Nations. Its findings add to mounting legal and diplomatic scrutiny of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, including a genocide case brought by South Africa at the International Court of Justice, where proceedings could take years.
The commission said Israeli forces had inflicted death and severe physical and mental harm on hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children and that killings continued after the October 2025 ceasefire. It cited alleged direct shootings by snipers and drones, strikes using high-impact weapons on residential buildings, schools and displacement camps, and attacks on neonatal and paediatric hospitals that it said dismantled children’s access to life-sustaining care.
The report also accused Israel of using starvation as a method of war, saying restrictions on humanitarian aid had produced acute and chronic malnutrition among children in Gaza. It said attacks on schools, mass displacement and enforced closures had disrupted children’s education, and alleged that Palestinian children in Gaza and the occupied West Bank had been arrested, tortured and mistreated in Israeli prisons and detention facilities, including through sexual and gender-based violence.
Srinivasan Muralidhar, the Indian jurist who chairs the commission, said children were still being killed and seriously injured despite the ceasefire. “By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future,” he said.
Israel’s foreign ministry said it “utterly rejects” the report, describing the commission as a flawed mechanism intended to “single out and vilify Israel rather than seek the truth.” Israel’s mission in Geneva said the report ignored Hamas’s tactics and erased Israeli children killed, kidnapped and targeted by Hamas.
Israeli leaders have consistently denied allegations of genocide. They say the military campaign in Gaza was launched in self-defence after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage. Israel says its operations are aimed at defeating Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups and securing the release of hostages, and that its forces act in accordance with international law while taking feasible steps to reduce civilian harm.
At least 73,035 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since the start of the war, including more than 21,280 children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures are treated as reliable by the UN. Since the October 2025 ceasefire, Gaza health officials say more than 1,020 Palestinians have been killed, including 265 children; the Israeli military says four soldiers have also been killed.
The commission previously accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza in a September 2025 report, which Israel also rejected as distorted and false. It has also previously concluded that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes and other grave violations of international law during the Oct. 7 attacks, and that Israeli security forces have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.
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