The United Nations reports that Israeli military forces continue to kill civilians, including children, with impunity and a total lack of accountability in both the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, despite active ceasefire agreements. Persistent Israeli military attacks have repeatedly violated the eight-month-old truce in the Gaza Strip and breached the newly announced ceasefire covering Lebanon and Iran.
Following another deadly night of clashes in Lebanon, aid agencies issued a new alert for Gaza on Friday, where 265 Palestinian children have been killed since the ceasefire was announced in October 2025.
Gaza: UNICEF warns of mounting child casualties
“During a period supposedly defined by restraint and protection, a child has been killed, on average, every single day for more than eight months,” said James Elder, spokesperson for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
“That is an absurd and devastating figure.”
Elder said that for many months, the world had been told there was a ceasefire in Gaza. Yet, for Palestinian children, this so-called ceasefire has become a cruel and deadly illusion.
Briefing journalists in Geneva via video from Amman, the UNICEF veteran noted that the children were not killed in a war zone, but rather in their homes, at school, while playing soccer, or while fishing.
“They were shot, they were bombed, they were struck by quadcopters” operated by the Israeli military, Elder continued.
He stressed that the continued killing of children was not due to a lack of options. Rather, it was the result of a lack of political will.
“Every day that passes without responsibility sends the same message: Palestinian children's lives can be taken without accountability. This is no longer a failure of the system—it has become the system,” he said.
According to the enclave’s health authorities, the child fatalities are among the nearly 1,000 Palestinians killed and more than 3,100 injured in Gaza since the ceasefire began.
Since October 2023, Israeli military forces have killed over 73,000 Palestinians and injured more than 173,000 others in Gaza. These attacks have occurred in locations such as homes, shelters, hospitals, schools, and lines for aid. Among these fatalities are at least 21,200 children.
The true death toll is believed to be higher. Among the confirmed casualties are at least 594 aid workers, 400 UN staff members, 1,700 health care workers, and 260 journalists. An estimated 58,000 children have lost one or both parents.
“You sneeze near the Orange line and you may well get shot,” Elder said, referring to the “continual creeping” of Israel’s so-called “Yellow Line” and “Orange Line”.
The uncertainty of these moving boundaries and “an utter lack of accountability” are the reason for such a high number of killings, with the Israeli forces responsible for “the vast, vast majority - 90 per cent plus”, the UNICEF spokesperson said.
The United Nations and its aid partners have repeatedly warned that the conflict has had a catastrophic humanitarian impact since Israel’s war in October 2023 began following attacks by Palestinian armed groups on Israeli territory. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), not a single hospital in Gaza is fully operational, and UNICEF warns that 1.1 million children face daily uncertainty regarding access to clean water.
“I talk to mothers who have children screaming because they don't have the clean water to wash [their skin]. Imagine a parent unable to fix that night after night,” Elder said.
“The scale of human suffering in Gaza being inflicted upon Gaza and enabled by others on Palestinian children, it's almost beyond comparison in our lifetime.”
Today, nearly 1.9 million people have been displaced in Gaza, many repeatedly, while more than 1.2 million have lost their homes.
UN relief chief: Gaza civilians cannot wait for diplomacy
On Thursday, UN emergency relief chief Tom Fletcher told the Security Council that civilians in Gaza cannot wait for a more convenient diplomatic moment to receive the basics for survival.
“Gaza is being held together by humanitarian workarounds and Palestinian perseverance,” he said, noting that humanitarians still face continued, deliberate constraints by Israeli authorities.
“These constraints, compounded by restrictions on essential UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency] and NGOs [non-governmental organizations] services, are leaving too much vital support stalled outside Gaza, and our work undermined by shortages of fuel, spare parts, and armored vehicles and other protective equipment for aid workers,” Fletcher said.
“These patterns should be considered alongside the rhetoric from some senior Israeli officials who place political conditions on humanitarian support, despite clear obligations under international humanitarian law.”
Fletcher reported that Israeli denial rates for aid missions into Gaza dropped from 31 percent before the ceasefire to 11 percent today. Nonetheless, he stressed that Palestinians in Gaza remain “deprived of the basics that you would all demand for your own families: safety, shelter, clean water, healthcare, education.”
Although the ceasefire reduced the harm to civilians from Israeli military strikes on Gaza, the situation in Gaza remains disastrous. Despite the decrease in active fighting, civilians continue to be killed and injured in daily airstrikes, shelling, and gunfire.
“This is what happens when children are described as collateral damage and potential terrorists, rather than humans and potential neighbors,” Fletcher said.
The UN relief chief stressed that Gaza remains the most dangerous place on Earth for delivering aid.
“Almost 600 aid workers killed there in nearly three years – over half of over 1,000 humanitarians killed globally,” he said.
Fletcher warned that too many Palestinians are being squeezed into an ever-shrinking strip of land, with 70 percent of the population in need of proper shelter and essential services.
“Sanitation conditions continue to deteriorate. Doctors report a stark increase in rat-bite cases,” he said
“Shortages of generators, engine oil, spare parts are forcing reliance on expensive alternatives, such as prolonged water trucking and complex medical evacuations.”
UNICEF’s Elder echoed this dire assessment, explaining that although some fuel is reaching generators that are still in working order, the Israeli authorities are not allowing spare parts into the enclave to repair broken machines or the oil needed to keep engines running smoothly.
“This is the environment my colleagues on the ground work in, keeping children breathing without a semblance of dignity,” he said.
Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN aid coordination office (OCHA), said that other major problems continue to go unresolved in Gaza due to delays and denials of aid deliveries. One such problem is the massive amount of solid waste still piling up.
“We've all heard the stories about the rats, the insects, and so on and so forth, that this causes. So, there is an opportunity, there is a possibility to get rid of all that, but we are not getting the access to it,” he told journalists in Geneva.
More killings in Lebanon
The OCHA spokesperson condemned the ongoing flare-up in Lebanon overnight. Reports indicate that at least 18 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes in the south, which were allegedly targeting Hezbollah fighters.
“We are seeing the same reports overnight, of course, with enormous concern, frankly […] more fighting is not going to help anyone,” Laerke said, highlighting the high level of humanitarian needs across Lebanon and particularly in the south.
Insecurity, the destruction of homes and infrastructure, and unexploded ordnance continue to prevent people from safely and sustainably returning to their communities.
“It is infinitely easier and faster to hurt people and inflict damage than it is to restore people's livelihoods, get them back to their homes, feed them and so on and so forth. There's just one or two days of this kind of warfare that translate into months, sometimes years, of humanitarian operations on the ground.”
UNICEF warns that more than 770,000 children are experiencing heightened distress after repeated exposure to violence, loss, and displacement.
According to Lebanese authorities, Israeli airstrikes and large-scale ground incursions in Lebanon have killed more than 4,000 people and injured over 12,000 since March 2. Among the dead are at least 247 children, and nearly 1,000 have been injured.