UN Investigators Accuse Israel of Deliberate Targeting of Children in Gaza, Citing Genocide

United Nations investigators have accused Israel of deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza, labeling it a key factor in an ongoing "genocide." The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry stated it found evidence that Israeli security forces have intentionally killed Palestinian children, which it argues demonstrates "the genocidal intent of the Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the larger Palestinian group in Gaza."

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Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli security forces.

The commission, established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021, previously concluded in a September report that Israel had committed "genocide" in the Gaza war, a finding Israel rejected. In its latest report, the investigative team highlighted the intense scale and systematic nature of Israeli military operations, resulting in "unprecedented" death, injury, and trauma among Palestinian children. The report found "reasonable grounds" to conclude that Israeli authorities and security forces "have continued to commit the crime of genocide" in Gaza.

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This, it said, was a key factor in establishing "the genocidal intent of the Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the larger Palestinian group in Gaza.”

Israel has strongly criticized the commission's findings, dismissing the report as "defamatory" and a "libelous sham." Israeli officials accused the investigators of overlooking "the brutal tactics of Hamas, which ruthlessly attacks Israeli children and uses Palestinian children as human shields." The commission's latest report examined crimes affecting Palestinian children and the impact of living conditions imposed by Israel on preventable child mortality in Gaza.

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the genocidal intent of the Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the larger Palestinian group in Gaza.

The investigative team stated that severe physical and mental injuries, mass trauma, orphanhood, separation, disability, repeated displacements, starvation, and the collapse of education and healthcare systems have "erased childhood" in Gaza and will have lifelong consequences for the territory's children. The chair of the inquiry, Indian judge Srinivasan Muralidhar, asserted that "By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future." The report notes that children continue to be killed and injured even after a ceasefire took effect in October 2025.

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have continued to commit the crime of genocide