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UNICEF Decries 'Intolerable' Israeli Killing of Lebanese, Palestinian Children
Despite promised ceasefires, ongoing Israeli attacks "are killing and injuring children, deepening their exposure to trauma, and leaving devastating consequences that could last a lifetime."
May 14, 2026
Officials at the United Nations Children's Fund this week condemned Israel's killing, maiming, and traumatization of children in Lebanon—where there is ostensibly a ceasefire in effect—the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine, and Gaza.
UNICEF said Wednesday that at least 59 children in Lebanon have reportedly been killed or wounded by Israeli forces over the past week, despite a nearly monthlong truce between Israel and the militant resistance group Hezbollah.
“Children are being killed and injured when they should be returning to classrooms, playing with friends, and recovering from months of fear and upheaval,” UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa Edouard Beigbeder said in a statement.
“Nearly a month ago, an agreement was reached to silence the weapons and stop the violence," Beigbeder added. "Reality is proving to be very different. Continued attacks are killing and injuring children, deepening their exposure to trauma, and leaving devastating consequences that could last a lifetime.”
According to Lebanon's Ministry of Public Health, at least 23 children have been killed and 93 wounded during the ceasefire. Since March 2—when Israel renewed attacks on its northern neighbor amid the nascent US-Israeli war on Iran—at least 200 children have been killed and over 800 others injured.
The ministry said six people—including two women and a child—were killed and 12 people wounded Wednesday evening when Israel bombed the village of Arab Salim in Nabatieh district. Separately on Wednesday, Israeli strikes on the village of Harouf killed one child, while two children were among three people killed by an Israeli strike on Roumine.
Lebanese officials say at least 2,896 people have been killed and 8,824 others wounded by Israeli attacks in Lebanon since March 2.
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said Monday in Geneva that “children are paying an intolerable price for escalating militarized operations and settler attacks across the occupied West Bank of Palestine, including East Jerusalem," as part of Israel's accelerating ethnic cleansing and colonization of the Palestinian territory.
“We're seeing attacks become increasingly coordinated,” Elder noted. "Documented incidents include children shot, stabbed, children beaten, and children pepper-sprayed.”
Elder continued:
Between January 2025 and today, at least one Palestinian child has been killed, on average, every week. That is, 70 Palestinian children killed in this timeframe. Ninety-three percent of these were killed by Israeli forces. A further 850 children were injured. Most of those children killed or wounded were by live ammunition. All this comes amid historic levels of settler attacks. [The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] said last month that March 2026 saw the highest number of Palestinians injured by settler attacks in the past 20 years.
“These are not isolated incidents—they point to a sustained pattern of the worst kinds of violations of children’s rights, as well as attacks on children’s homes, on their schools, and on the water they rely on," Elder stressed. "What is unfolding is not only an escalation in violence against Palestinian children; it is the steady dismantling of the conditions children need to survive and grow."
On Wednesday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said that Israeli occupation forces fatally shot 16-year-old Youssef Ali Youssef Kaabneh near Jaljulia, north of Ramallah, amid sweeping raids across the West Bank.
Elder said that in Gaza, at least 229 children have been killed and 260 others wounded by Israeli forces since the October 2025 ceasefire between Israel and Hamas—which led the October 7, 2023 attack—took effect. Since October 2023, more than 64,000 children and 250,000 Palestinians of all ages have been killed or wounded by Israel's Gaza onslaught, which a panel of UN experts last year called a genocide. UNICEF has called Gaza “the world’s most dangerous place to be a child."
Dr. Reinhilde Van de Weerdt, the UN World Health Organization representative for the occupied Palestinian territory, drew attention this week to the 10,000 Gazan children "with life-changing injuries." Treatment for these wounds is often difficult to impossible due to Israel's ongoing siege of the coastal strip.
"Every day that rehabilitation services in Gaza remain underresourced is a day that preventable disability risks becoming permanent," said Van de Weerdt. "Gaza does not need stopgap measures, it needs sustained investment in the health workforce, in equipment, and in the systems and environment that allow people to recover, rebuild, and return to life."
Thousands of Gazan children have lost at least one limb, tens of thousands have lost their parents, and hundreds of thousands have lost their homes due to mass forced displacement.
All that trauma and more is fueling a mental health crisis among children in Palestine and Lebanon.
“The impact of repeated exposure to conflict on children’s mental health can be profound and long-lasting,” said Beigbeder. “Children in Lebanon have endured waves of violence, displacement, and uncertainty, often with little or no time to recover. Without urgent support, the psychological scars of this compounded crisis may stay with them for years, affecting not only their well-being, but their future and the future of the country.”
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UNICEF Says Children 'Being Pulled From Under Rubble' in Lebanon After Israeli Bombardment
The United Nations Children's Fund warned that Israel's continued assault on Lebanon "poses a grave risk to the ceasefire and the efforts toward a lasting and comprehensive peace."
Apr 10, 2026
A United Nations agency said late Thursday that Israel's massive bombardment of Lebanon earlier this week killed or wounded more than 180 children, a statement issued as the Israeli military vowed to continue assailing the war-ravaged country—potentially derailing ceasefire efforts in Iran and across the region.
The UN Children's Fund, widely known as UNICEF, said the toll from Israel's assault on Wednesday brought the total number of children killed or wounded in Lebanon since March 2 to at least 600. The agency said it is "receiving reports of children being pulled from under the rubble, while others remain missing and separated from their families."
"Many are experiencing trauma, having lost loved ones, their homes, and any sense of safety," UNICEF said. "Across the country, more than one million people have been uprooted, including an estimated 390,000 children, many for the second, third, or even fourth time."
UNICEF went on to echo growing concerns in the region, and around the world, that Israel's continued bombing and invasion of Lebanon "poses a grave risk to the ceasefire and the efforts toward a lasting and comprehensive peace."
"The children in Lebanon cannot be left behind," the UN agency said.
UNICEF's statement came as the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces said Lebanon is the Israeli military's "primary combat" zone and that the IDF is "in a state of war, we are not in a ceasefire."
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have both insisted that Lebanon was not included in the Iran ceasefire agreement announced late Tuesday—a claim that Iranian leaders and Pakistan's prime minister, who is mediating peace talks, have said is false.
On Thursday, Trump said Netanyahu agreed during a phone call to "low-key it" in Lebanon. But in a recorded statement addressed to residents of northern Israel on Thursday, Netanyahu declared: “There is no ceasefire in Lebanon. We continue to strike Hezbollah with force, and we will not stop until we restore your security.”
Netanyahu's decision to escalate Israel's attacks on Lebanon—killing hundreds of people and leveling entire neighborhoods—just hours after Trump announced the ceasefire deal with Iran fit with a longstanding pattern of the Israeli government undercutting diplomacy.
Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, wrote for The Intercept on Thursday that Israel "has worked ceaselessly to prevent any off-ramp from confrontation between the US and Iran," noting that "in 1995, when Iran and the US flirted with economic rapprochement by opening the Iran oil industry to American investment and development, Israel and AIPAC lobbied Congress and President Bill Clinton to block it."
"Netanyahu is widely thought to benefit from wars—from Gaza to Iran and now, most critically, in Lebanon—to shore up his political fortunes. He faces an election in October, and losing could lead to the revival of corruption charges that might land him in prison," Abdi noted. "The question now may unfortunately not be whether Iran and the US can find a compromise. Instead, the fate of the global economy and, not least, Iranians themselves, could rest between Netanyahu and Trump, who faces his own political challenges in midterm elections this year."
US Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) wrote Thursday that "Netanyahu urged Trump to start this war, now Trump must demand he help end it."
"Who's calling the shots here?" Van Hollen asked.
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'Catastrophic,' Says UNICEF: 1,100+ Children Killed or Wounded in Mideast Since US-Israel Launched Iran War
The agency demanded that all parties protect civilians and reiterated the secretary-general's call "to end the fighting and engage in diplomatic negotiations."
Mar 12, 2026
Since the United States and Israel launched an unprovoked war on Iran at the end of February, more than 1,100 youth have been killed or injured in related violence across the Middle East, the United Nations Children's Fund said Wednesday, calling for a swift diplomatic resolution.
"The situation is becoming catastrophic for millions of children across the region," UNICEF said in a statement, noting that at least 200 children are reportedly dead in Iran, 91 in Lebanon, four in Israel, and one in Kuwait. "These numbers will likely climb as the violence intensifies and spreads."
Most of the kids killed in Iran died in what mounting evidence suggests was a US attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' school in Minab on February 28. That attack killed an estimated 175 people, mostly students ages 7-12, part of an overall death toll that the Iranian government has said exceeds 1,300.
Responding to the school bombing, Gordon Brown, a former UK prime minister who's now the UN special envoy for global education, argued in a Guardian opinion piece Thursday that "the world will now need stronger mechanisms to ensure accountability," such as a body complementing the International Criminal Court but specifically for children, "focusing its attention on the bombing of schools, abductions of pupils, and militias that enslave boys and girls."
With the widening conflict in the Middle East, UNICEF noted Wednesday, "widespread disruption to education has left millions of children out of school across the region, while hundreds of thousands of children have been displaced by unrelenting bombardment."
In Lebanon, where Israeli attacks are allegedly targeting the Lebanese political and paramilitary group Hezbollah despite a November 2024 ceasefire deal, nearly 800,000 people, including around 200,000 children, have been forced from their homes, according to Mercy Corps. The Lebanese government has said at least 570 people have been killed and 1,444 injured.
"Civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, and water and sanitation systems—upon which children depend to survive—have been attacked, damaged, or destroyed by parties to the conflict," UNICEF said. "Nothing justifies the killing and maiming of children, or the destruction and disruption of essential services that children depend on."
"Grave violations against children in armed conflict can constitute violations of international law, including international humanitarian law, and international human rights law," the UN agency continued.
Across Iran, several United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage sites have also been damaged by the US-Israeli war, which experts worldwide argue violates both the US Constitution and UN Charter.
The UN Security Council, which is currently led by President Donald Trump's administration, on Wednesday adopted a resolution condemning Iran's retaliatory attacks on Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan—nations that host US military bases—without even mentioning the US-Israeli bombing campaign.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres last Friday demanded a return to negotiations. Trump, who abandoned a previous Iranian nuclear deal during his first term, ditched recent talks with Iran in favor of bombing the country with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who has used war on Iran to again close crossings into the Gaza Strip, or as critics have put it, reinstate a "starvation policy" in the Palestinian territory devastated by Israel's 29-month genocidal assault.
In addition to reiterating "the secretary-general's call on parties to the conflict to end the fighting and engage in diplomatic negotiations," UNICEF on Wednesday urged everyone involved "to take all necessary precautions in the choice of means and methods of warfare to minimize harm to civilians, including by avoiding the use of explosive weapons that disproportionally affect children."
"The region's children—all 200 million of them—are counting on the world to act quickly," the agency concluded.
A Wednesday letter signed by every member of the US Senate Democratic Caucus but Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.)—who previously helped Republicans block a war powers resolution intended to halt Trump's assault on Iran—called for a probe of the Minab school attack and sounded the alarm about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's rhetoric that "only serves to endanger civilians."
Specifically, Hegseth has said that the US assault on Iran, which they're calling Operation Epic Fury, would have "no stupid rules of engagement," and there will be "death and destruction from the sky all day long."
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