An independent United Nations inquiry said that Israeli authorities and security forces deliberately targeted Palestinian children during the Gaza war, findings it said amounted to genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The report by the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel examined violations against Palestinian children since the war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, 2023.
According to the commission, children made up around 30% of those killed in Gaza. Between October 7, 2023, and October 7, 2025, at least 20,179 children were killed, the report said.
The commission said the number of child deaths was higher than in previous Gaza conflicts. In the 2008–2009 and 2014 hostilities, children accounted for about 24% of conflict-related fatalities.
“The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces,” commission chair Srinivasan Muralidhar said in a statement.
The report said Israeli forces continued to use high-payload munitions and weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated residential areas despite rising child casualties.
The commission said this indicated that attacks killing children in large numbers were intentional. It also said the targeting of children was one of the elements used to assess intent to destroy the Palestinian group, in whole or in part, in Gaza.
Israel rejected the report. Its mission in Geneva called it a “libelous sham” and said the commission ignored what it described as Hamas’s tactics.
A statement shared by Israel’s mission said Israel “consistently strives to minimize harm to children even in situations of conflict” and rejected the suggestion that it deliberately targets children.
The report follows an earlier finding by the same commission that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, a conclusion Israel has repeatedly rejected.
The commission also said violations against Palestinian children amounted to war crimes in the occupied West Bank.
