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, in a report slammed by Israel.

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-strong investigative team, which does not speak for the UN itself, first determined in a report in September that Israel had committed "genocide" in the war in Gaza – a finding Israel flatly rejected.

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.

Israel, which has long been harshly critical of the commission, slammed the report as "defamatory" and a "libellous sham".

It accused the investigators of ignoring "the brutal tactics of Hamas, which ruthlessly attacks Israeli children and uses Palestinian children as human shields".

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 the Gaza Strip, 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." (AFP)




Edited by Tony Sabine