A displaced Palestinian boy looks through a tear in a tent wall in Gaza City, May 6, 2026. Photo: file/REUTERS
President Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday called on influential countries and the international community to impose a “meaningful price” on Israel for crimes against Palestinian children and to prevent the repetition of crimes revealed in a recent UN investigation.
Israeli authorities and security forces deliberately targeted Palestinian children, resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza and war crimes in the occupied West Bank, the independent UN investigation said on Tuesday. The report of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel investigated violations against Palestinian children since the start of the conflict between Israel and Hamas on 7 October 2023.
About 30% of those killed in the Gaza conflict were children, the report shows. The UN commission said Palestinian children were deliberately targeted and killed during the war, including after a ceasefire came into force in October 2025. It said this was a key element establishing genocidal intent by Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the Palestinian group, in whole or in part, in Gaza.
Responding to the investigation’s findings, the president said in a post on X that he was “deeply troubled” by them.
“The reported killing of over 20,000 children is a stain on our collective conscience. Pakistan strongly condemns these atrocities and calls for immediate accountability.
“The international community, especially influential countries, must impose a significant cost on Israel for these crimes and take effective measures to prevent their recurrence,” the president said.
He also called for an end to the violence and the protection of Palestinian children in accordance with international law.
President expresses serious concern over UN findings on Gaza
“I am deeply disturbed by the findings of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry, which concludes that Palestinian children in Gaza have been deliberately targeted, resulting in an unprecedented loss of…
— President of Pakistan (@PresOfPakistan) June 25, 2026
Child deaths
The report found that the proportion of children killed was higher than in previous conflicts. Between October 7, 2023 and October 7, 2025, at least 20,179 children were killed, about 30% of the total death toll. By comparison, in the hostilities in Gaza in 2008-2009 and 2014, children accounted for approximately 24% of conflict-related deaths, the report said.
Israeli forces continued to use munitions and high-payload weapons with widespread effects in densely populated residential areas, despite rising child casualties, the commission said. “This indicates that such attacks, which killed children in such high numbers, were intentional,” it said.
Read: Dutch report documenting Israeli shootings of Palestinian children in Gaza wins European Press Prize
It said it believed children were being targeted collectively because the Israeli security forces considered the civilian population as a whole to be associated with Hamas and other armed groups.
Conditions imposed by Israel in Gaza, including widespread attacks, repeated displacements and starvation caused by the blockade of aid, food and medicine, severely harmed children’s health and development, resulting in preventable deaths and trauma, the report said.
Read more: UNICEF calls Gaza ceasefire a ‘deadly illusion’
The study also found that attacks on health care and reproductive facilities affected the survival of newborns and reported increases in abortions, and that almost all children in Gaza were reported to be in need of psychological support.
