Geneva, Switzerland (AFP) — Israel is deliberately targeting Palestinian children in what has become a key factor in an ongoing “genocide” in Gaza, United Nations (UN)  investigators charged on Tuesday, in a report slammed by Israel.

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry said it had found evidence that “Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli security forces”.

This, it said, was a key factor in establishing “the genocidal intent of the Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the larger Palestinian group in Gaza”.

The three-member investigative team, which does not speak for the UN itself, first determined in a report last September that Israel had committed “genocide” in the war in Gaza — a finding Israel flatly rejected.

In Tuesday’s follow-up report, they said the intense scale and systematic nature of Israeli military operations had continued, resulting in the “unprecedented” death, injury and trauma of Palestinian children.

There were “reasonable grounds” to conclude that Israel’s authorities and security forces “have continued to commit the crime of genocide” in Gaza, they said.

Israel, which has long been harshly critical of the commission, slammed the report as “defamatory” and a “libellous sham”.

It accused the investigators of ignoring “the brutal tactics of Hamas, which ruthlessly attacks Israeli children and uses Palestinian children as human shields”.

The commission, which was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021, examined for its latest report crimes affecting Palestinian children, and how living conditions imposed by Israel in Gaza were “resulting in preventable mortality of children”.

“Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip, and war crimes in the West Bank,” the team said in a statement.

The commission said that severe physical and mental injuries, mass trauma, orphanhood, separation, disability, repeated displacements, starvation, and the collapse of education and healthcare had “erased childhood” in Gaza and would continue to affect the children throughout their lives.

“By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future,” said Indian judge Srinivasan Muralidhar, who chairs the inquiry.

As for documenting crimes, Muralidhar added: “Israeli soldiers have themselves put in the public domain so much incriminating evidence about what they’ve been doing.”

The report comes days after the UN children’s agency UNICEF said at least 265 children had been killed and hundreds more wounded in Gaza since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect.

The Hamas October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory response in Gaza has killed more than 72,800 people, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry,

The UN inquiry said that during the first two years of the war at least 20,179 children were killed and 44,143 injured “as a direct result of the hostilities in Gaza”.

The killing and maiming of Palestinian children “was part of a strategy to destroy the biological continuity and future existence of the Palestinian group”, it said.

Israel was responsible for causing a “severe orphan crisis”, while wounded youngsters “face a lifetime of disability”, the report said.

The siege of Gaza “directly undermined reproductive and newborn health”, while the collapse of public health programmes “eroded the conditions necessary for a healthy next generation”.

The report listed Israeli divisions, brigades and units that may be responsible for killing children, in specific incidents in Gaza and the West Bank.

“We know who they are,” Commissioner Chris Sidoti told a press conference.

“Every international legal norm has been violated by the actions of the Israeli authorities towards Palestinian children — and they need to be held accountable.”

Addressing Israeli citizens directly, he said: “What kind of people are your leaders when they give orders, they make statements, that encourage this kind of conduct: not merely permit it, but encourage it?”

Besides Gaza, the commission also documented a sharp increase in violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinian children in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.

The commission urged all UN member states, including Israel, to ensure accountability for crimes committed.