Published 20.38
Israel is deliberately targeting children in Gaza, an independent UN commission says.
The action constitutes genocide, according to the group.
– Palestinian children have been intentional targets, says chairman Srinivasan Muralidhar.
Israeli security forces deliberately target Palestinian children in boats Gaza and in the West Bank, writes an independent commission under the UN Human Rights Office Ohchr in a new report.
In Gaza, the Israeli military (IDF) has fired directly at children with precision weapons, through drones and snipers, the report says. Similar information has even doctors raised the alarm. At the same time, the IDF has used high-explosive weapons in attacks on residential buildings, schools and other buildings used as refugee camps, where large numbers of children were.
“It indicates that such attacks, which killed children in large numbers, were carried out with intent,” the report states. Children have been collectively punished because the IDF has assessed the entire civilian population of Gaza as linked to Hamas or other armed groups, the group believes.
Even after the ceasefire
This in turn shows that Israel has genocidal intent, writes the commission, because it is about destroying an entire ethnic group.
– By attacking children, Israel is attacking the Palestinian people’s ability to exist and decide their future, says commission chairman Srinivasan Muralidhar in that press release which was published in connection with the report.
Even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children have been killed and seriously injured, according to the report.
– Israel continues to show a lack of respect for the ceasefire and for the protection that Palestinian children are entitled to under international law, says Muralidhar.
The commission states in the report that around 30 percent of those killed during the war in Gaza were children. In numbers, it is estimated to be at least 20,000 children during the period October 2023 to October 2025.
The number is higher than in previous wars in Gaza. During the war in 2008-2009 and 2014, the conflict-related death toll for children was 24 percent.
The group also highlights that violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank against Palestinian children has increased. There Palestinian children are also often held in Israeli captivity, and evidence has been collected showing that they are subjected to torture, sexual violence and other inhumane treatment, they write further.
Palestinian boys suffer particularly badly, it says.
Not the first time
This is the second time that the commission, named The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, has accused Israel of genocide in Gaza.
In September 2025 several Israeli politicians’ statements about Palestinians were also pointed out to underline that the intention was to eradicate the group.
Israel has dismissed the report as the commission’s second “smear campaign” in a row.
The commission is also criticized for overlooking Hamas’ “brutal tactics”, writes the Reuters news agency.
This is how genocide is defined
Genocide is defined in international law as acts with the intention of completely or partially annihilating a national, ethnic, racially determined or religious group as such.
In addition to killing or seriously injuring members of the group, the acts may also consist of:
The intention is decisive for the above actions to be defined as genocide.
The criminal classification was added after the Nazis’ attempts to exterminate, among other things, Jews and Roma in connection with the Second World War.
Source: United Nations
