A United Nations commission of inquiry has found that Israel deliberately targeted Palestinian children in Gaza, resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, in a report published on 23 June 2026.

The finding extends a genocide determination the same commission first reached in September 2025, and places the killing, maiming and detention of children at the centre of its case that Israel intended to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza.

The report, by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, examined violations against Palestinian children between 7 October 2023 and 31 March 2026. Israel rejected it, calling the document a libellous sham.

The casualty figures

At least 20,179 children were killed and 44,143 injured in Gaza between 7 October 2023 and 7 October 2025, the Commission found, drawing on figures from the UN humanitarian office and the Gaza health ministry. Children made up 30 per cent of those killed and 26 per cent of those injured over the period.

That share rose from about 24 per cent in the Israeli attacks on Gaza of 2008 to 2009 and 2014, the report said.

At least 5,031 of the children killed were under five, including 1,029 under the age of one and about 420 newborns. Save the Children estimates a further 5,160 children remain buried under rubble.

"The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed," the Commission's chair, Justice Srinivasan Muralidhar, said.

At least 5,031 of the children killed were under five, including 1,029 under the age of one and about 420 newborns. Save the Children estimates a further 5,160 children remain buried under rubble. The dead amount to roughly two per cent of Gaza's 1.2 million children.

Children are seven times more likely than adults to die from explosive weapons, the report said, citing their smaller bodies, thinner skin and pliable bones. Israeli forces used high-payload munitions in dense residential areas throughout the war, killing families across three and four generations.

The Commission traced a stated shift in targeting to a 25 December 2023 Israeli military statement describing a move from selective strikes to causing "maximum damage" to Hamas.

When Israel ended a pause in fighting on 18 March 2025, airstrikes killed at least 170 children before midday. Between 18 and 31 March, Israeli forces killed at least 322 children and injured 609, about 100 children a day.

Deliberate targeting

The Commission concluded that Israeli forces directly and intentionally shot individual children, from newborns to adolescents, using sniper rifles, drones and quadcopters that gave operators a clear view of their targets before firing.

Seventeen medical practitioners who worked in Gaza hospitals reported a consistent pattern of children arriving with single gunshot wounds to the head and chest, indicating aimed fire rather than crossfire. The Commission documented a further 168 children with gunshot wounds between November 2023 and July 2025; at least 73 were shot in the head and 22 in the chest, and at least 88 died.

It investigated representative cases. On 29 January 2024, Israeli forces killed Hind Rajab, members of her family and two paramedics sent to rescue her in Tel al-Hawa, Gaza City. The Commission found the family's car was hit from close range and the ambulance shelled, and attributed the attack to the 401st Brigade.

On 24 January 2024, a sniper killed a 15-year-old boy holding a white cloth as he stepped from his home in Khan Younis, then shot the older brother who ran to him. On 12 April 2024, a quadcopter shot a 10-day-old baby in the head as his mother breastfed him in a tent in Nuseirat camp. The baby survived with brain injuries.

After May 2025, doctors reported treating children shot at and around aid sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

"The first shot is directly to the head," one Israeli soldier said in the ITVX documentary Breaking Ranks.

The quadcopters are operated by a unit known as Unit 888 or Refaim, the report said, citing an Israeli Channel 14 segment in which officers compared the weapon to a video game.

Killings after the ceasefire

Killings did not stop after the 10 October 2025 ceasefire, the Commission found. Children continued to be shot near the so-called yellow line, an Israeli-declared demarcation inside Gaza that the report said lacked clear markings, warnings or safe passage.

On 29 November 2025 an Israeli drone killed two brothers, aged 10 and nine, as they gathered firewood near Bani Suheila, east of Khan Younis. The Commission attributed the strike to the Kfir Brigade and rejected the army's account that the boys posed an immediate threat, noting they were more than 300 metres away.

On 10 December 2025, Israeli soldiers shot a 16-year-old in Jabalia, then ran a tank over his body.

The report logged more than 100 children killed since early October 2025 as of 13 January 2026. UNICEF put the figure at 265 as of 19 June 2026, an average of about one child a day for more than eight months. The health ministry counts nearly 1,000 Palestinians of all ages killed since the ceasefire began.

Detention, torture and rape

The report documented the systematic mistreatment of detained Palestinian children. Boys aged 12 and over were separated during mass arrests, labelled as fighters even after identity cards confirmed their age, and held alongside adults in Israeli military and prison facilities.

The Commission recorded beatings, prolonged blindfolding, attacks by dogs, electric shocks, forced nudity and sexual assault, including rape and threats of rape against boys. One 15-year-old described 54 days of repeated interrogation and torture, including being electrocuted through a needle in his shoulder. The Commission concluded the treatment amounted to torture, enforced disappearance and persecution based on age intersecting with nationality and gender.

In the West Bank, more than 1,655 children were detained after October 2023, 600 of them in 2025. As of 31 December 2025, 51 per cent of 351 child detainees were held in administrative detention, imprisoned indefinitely without charge, a record number.

A 17-year-old from Ramallah died in Megiddo prison on 22 March 2025. An autopsy found severe prolonged malnutrition; the Commission found his death amounted to the war crimes of torture and wilful killing. As of 17 February 2025, Israel was withholding the bodies of 40 Palestinian children.

Healthcare, siege and starvation

Israel's attacks on hospitals and its siege deprived children of life-sustaining care, the Commission found. All three of Gaza's paediatric hospitals were forced to close in the first two months of the war. Decomposing newborns were found on defunct life-support machines at Al-Nasr Paediatric Hospital after an evacuation in November 2023, footage the Commission verified with the Washington Post and CNN.

The number of working incubators in northern Gaza fell from 178 before the war to 54 by late 2024. At least 15 newborns died of hypothermia between December 2024 and February 2025.

"This is not a normal situation for neonates to die from cold," a paediatric doctor said.

The blockade drove acute malnutrition and the return of polio after 25 years, when a 10-month-old was paralysed in August 2024. The IPC confirmed famine in Gaza Governorate in August 2025, the first such confirmation in the region. By 1 October 2025, UNICEF recorded 151 child deaths from malnutrition; July 2025 alone accounted for 24 deaths of children under five.

Within the first three months of the war, more than 1,000 children had limbs amputated, many without anaesthetic, the report said, citing UNICEF. Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world.

Births in the first half of 2025 fell 41 per cent against the same period in 2022, and miscarriage rates rose by up to 300 per cent.

A 13-year-old boy who was injured and evacuated told the Commission "we had to eat cat food and grind donkey food".

The West Bank

In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Israeli forces killed 213 Palestinian children between 7 October 2023 and 20 October 2025, 206 of them boys, the report found. It said the pattern reflected the targeting of boys as perceived present or future fighters.

The killings came during sustained operations, including Operation Summer Camps from August 2024 and Operation Iron Wall from January 2025, which displaced tens of thousands. A two-year-old girl shot in the head while eating dinner south of Jenin on 25 January 2025 was the youngest child killed in the territory since the war began.

On 16 November 2025 Israeli soldiers shot a 14-year-old in Al-Faraa refugee camp in Tubas and left him bleeding on the ground for about 45 minutes, the report found. Video reviewed by the Commission showed a soldier kicking back a cap the boy threw for attention, and another placing a stone beside him, which the report said was an attempt to frame him as a stone-thrower.

Settlers carried out more than 1,000 attacks across 230 Palestinian communities in the first half of 2025, the highest rate since UN records began in 2006. The Commission found the state armed, enabled and shielded settler violence. It documented cases of settlers abducting and assaulting children, including a girl and boy under five tied to a tree at knifepoint.

Mockery and dehumanisation

The Commission documented at least 35 instances of Israeli soldiers filming themselves mocking or destroying symbols of childhood in Gaza: a teddy bear hung from a tank barrel, dolls with taped eyes, soldiers riding a child's toy horse through a wrecked flat. It found the pattern reflected a military culture of degradation rather than isolated acts. Israeli politicians fed that culture, the report said, citing the former Knesset member Moshe Feiglin, who said "every child in Gaza is the enemy".

Israel's response

Israel rejected the report through its mission in Geneva, which said it dismisses the document as a libellous sham and rejected any suggestion that it deliberately targets children. It said the report ignored what it called Hamas tactics, including the diversion of aid, and omitted Israel's facilitation of vaccinations and field hospitals. Hamas has denied diverting aid.

Israel does not recognise the commission, maintains it has no legal responsibility for Palestinian children in the occupied territory, and did not respond to the 13 requests for information the Commission sent since October 2023.

Named units and recommendations

The Commission named the Israeli units it found responsible on reasonable grounds, including the Kfir Brigade, the 401st Brigade, the 98th and 99th Divisions, the Menashe and Ephraim Brigades in the West Bank and the quadcopter unit known as Unit 888.

It called on states to halt arms transfers to Israel and to sanction officials and settlers. It urged them to arrest anyone subject to International Criminal Court warrants and asked the ICC prosecutor to give particular attention to crimes against children. The report also recommended that the UN Secretary-General expand Israel's listing for grave violations against children to include abduction.

Report here: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session62/a-hrc-62-crp-2.pdf