Israel is deliberately targeting Palestinian children in what has become a key factor in an ongoing genocide in Gaza, United Nations investigators charged on Tuesday.
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry said it had found evidence that “Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli security forces”.
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”.
The three-member investigative team, which does not speak for the UN itself, first determined in a report last September that Israel had committed genocide in its war on Gaza.
In Tuesday’s follow-up report, they said the intense scale and systematic nature of Israeli military operations had continued, resulting in the “unprecedented” death, injury and trauma of Palestinian children.
There were “reasonable grounds” to conclude that Israel’s authorities and security forces “have continued to commit the crime of genocide” in Gaza, they said.
Childhood ‘erased’ in Gaza
The commission, which was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021, examined for its latest report crimes affecting Palestinian children, and how living conditions imposed by Israel in Gaza were “resulting in preventable mortality of children”.
“Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, and war crimes in the West Bank,” the team said in a statement.
The commission said that severe physical and mental injuries, mass trauma, orphanhood, separation, disability, repeated displacements, starvation, and the collapse of education and healthcare had “erased childhood” in Gaza and would continue to affect the territory’s children throughout their lives.
“By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future,” said Indian judge Srinivasan Muralidhar, who chairs the inquiry.
“Even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children continue to be killed and seriously injured.”
