UN report says Israel deliberately targeted Palestinian children in Gaza

The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel said Israeli authorities and security forces deliberately targeted Palestinian children in Gaza, a finding it said amounted to genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The commission also said the abuse extended to war crimes in the West Bank, placing children at the center of conduct it described as systematic and deliberate.

The June 23, 2026 report was the commission’s first specialized examination of crimes and violations against Palestinian children. It said its findings were built on hundreds of open-source items, remote interviews with victims and witnesses, and an open call for submissions, while also drawing on incidents and historical developments before October 2023 where relevant. The report said about 30 percent of those killed in Gaza were children, a figure that reinforces the scale of the civilian toll the panel said it documented.

The commission said the killing and serious injury of children continued even after the October 2025 ceasefire, which it cited as important evidence of genocidal intent. Chris Sidoti, one of the commissioners, told UN News: “Even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children continue to be killed and seriously injured.” The panel’s earlier report, released on September 16, 2025, had already concluded that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, and the new children-focused findings extend that legal and factual analysis.

UNICEF said that by February 3, 2026, at least 21,289 children were among 71,803 Palestinians reported killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023. Against that backdrop, the commission’s June 9, 2026 report on the broader conflict had been slated for presentation to the Human Rights Council’s 62nd session on June 15 in Geneva, underscoring the continued diplomatic weight of the inquiry’s work.

Israel’s U.N. mission rejected the report as a “libelous sham” and called the commission a “fundamentally flawed mechanism.” Rights groups including Amnesty International have said the commission’s genocide finding should trigger international action, a sign that the report is likely to sharpen pressure on governments and multilateral bodies already confronting one of the war’s most contested legal questions.