The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Tuesday released a report examining violations against Palestinian children throughout the conflict in Gaza, concluding that Israel has engaged in genocide by deliberately targeting children.
The commission said that about 30% of the people killed by Israeli forces in Gaza have been children. The findings cover the period since the war began and extend past the ceasefire that took effect in October 2025.
“The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces,” the commission’s chair, Srinivasan Muralidhar, said in a statement accompanying the report.
The commission’s September 2025 report had already found that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza and that Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had incited such acts. Netanyahu is also the subject of a separate International Criminal Court arrest warrant for war crimes.
The Israeli mission in Geneva responded by rejecting the commission’s findings. In a statement, the mission said Israel rejected the “libellous sham.”
The report aligns with a substantial body of research from UN investigators, human rights organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and genocide scholars who have concluded that Israeli actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide.
The findings come during a fragile ceasefire that has been in place since October 2025 but has not stopped periodic violence. Health officials in Gaza have reported more than 1,000 deaths since the ceasefire took effect, as previously reported by MSI.