JERUSALEM (AP) — A panel of independent experts working under a United Nations mandate has accused Israel of intentionally shooting children in Gaza, while also repeating prior accusations that Israel has carried out genocide in the territory.
Israel strongly and repeatedly denies that it has committed genocide during its two-and-a-half-year military campaign in Gaza.
The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which operates under the U.N. Human Rights Council, released a report Tuesday stating that approximately 30% of Palestinians killed between October 2023 and October 2025 were children — a total exceeding 20,000. Investigators believe additional children may be missing or buried in unmarked graves.
Israel has consistently denied deliberately targeting civilians and has pushed back against genocide accusations from both the commission and various human rights organizations. Israel’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the report as a “libelous sham,” saying the allegations had not been verified. The ministry also attacked the commission itself, describing it as “a fundamentally flawed mechanism whose very purpose is to single out and vilify Israel rather than seek the truth.”
The report concluded that the devastating impact of the conflict on children in Gaza constitutes both war crimes and genocide — an escalation of accusations the commission first raised in September.
“Even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children continue to be killed and seriously injured, with continued disregard by Israel for the ceasefire and for the protection owed to Palestinian children under international law,” said Srinivasan Muralidhar, the commission’s chair.
The report named specific Israeli military divisions operating in areas where children — some as young as infants — were killed, and identified the types of weapons used. Investigators paid particular attention to cases where children were killed by quadcopter drones or sniper fire, frequently from a single gunshot.
Medical professionals interviewed by the commission said autopsies from those incidents “indicate a high degree of precision in the use of force, suggesting that the shot was carefully aimed rather than incidental or the result of indiscriminate fire.”
The report also documented cases of children being killed even after a ceasefire was reached in October 2025, including instances involving children who were reportedly gathering firewood near the yellow line that marks the boundary of Israeli military-controlled territory.
“By maintaining that the children killed were ‘suspects,’ the Israeli security forces have deflected responsibility to Palestinian children, portraying them as ‘terrorists’ rather than casualties,” the report states.
Israel has broadly criticized the United Nations and firmly rejected the commission’s previous findings, including the genocide accusation, asserting that it takes measures to minimize civilian casualties and protect children. The current conflict began with the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, which killed approximately 1,200 people and resulted in 251 individuals being taken hostage. Israel’s subsequent military offensive in Gaza has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, including those who died after the ceasefire, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
The Health Ministry, which operates under the Hamas-led government, is staffed by medical professionals and maintains detailed casualty records that United Nations agencies and independent experts generally regard as reliable. The ministry does not separate civilian deaths from militant deaths, but reports that women and children account for roughly half of all fatalities.
