Nora Barrows-Friedman
Rights and Accountability 26 June 2026
Israel attacks children playing in tents, with Nora Barrows-Friedman
In Gaza, Palestinian children are being hunted, maimed and killed by Israel eight months into the so-called ceasefire.
Israeli forces bombed a group of childrenwho were playing in displacement tents in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis on 24 June. The attack killed 12-year-old Ahmad Mohsen al-Raqeb.
Reporter Adli Abu Taha filmed relatives in anguish, mourning over Ahmad’s body, with one man saying, “what did this child do to deserve this? What did he do wrong? Why did they target him? He’s innocent. These were just children playing. Why did they suddenly bomb them with a missile? Why is the world silent about us?”
He added, “They’re busy with the World Cup while we lie buried in death.”
On Tuesday, an Israeli attack on Khan Younis killed at least two Palestinians, and a teenaged boy was critically injured.
That same day, a disoriented elderly Palestinian man was found near the so-called yellow line, reportedly released by Israeli forces with his hands and feet still restrained.
Reporter Doaa Albaz captured footage of the elder receiving care in the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, with hospital staff saying that his body showed clear signs of torture. They added that he could not remember his own name.
On Monday, 22 June, Israel carried out a series of airstrikes and attacks in both Gaza City and al-Mawasi in Khan Younis.
In Gaza City, journalist Ayman al-Hesi reported that Israeli missiles tore through a crowded street with busy shops and displacement centers in the al-Rimal neighborhood, in a so-called double tap strike that killed a 17-year old girl and wounded at least five others.
According to reporter and researcher Maha Hussaini writing in Middle East Eye, the teenager, Raghad Ashour, left her family’s makeshift tent in central Gaza City and set off for a nearby learning center. She never arrived.
“Just meters from the center, Raghad was killed in an Israeli drone strike,” Hussaini reports.
Her great-uncle, Jamil Ashour, told Middle East Eye, “Despite everything she had been through, she was determined to attend her classes. She found a center near the camp and went there every morning. She studied hard and would arrive early to secure a desk and make sure everything was ready before lessons began. But she never made it to the center.”
Raghad was the only daughter in her family, Husseini writes.
“Her father was killed in an Israeli attack when she was about 3 years old, leaving her mother to raise her and her four brothers alone.”
Also on Monday, an Israeli drone struck a car in al-Mawasi.
Reporter Ahmed Al-Najjar said that a paramedic, Maysara Al-Khawaja, was killed in the attack.
At least 15 Palestinians, including three children, were killed in multiple massacres over the weekend.
On Sunday, an 8-year-old girl, Julia al-Balawi, was killed while playing in her displacement tent in al-Mawasi, accordingto Ahmed Al-Najjar. The missile strike killed her and a man, he said.
In a video filmed by Tamer Qeshta, relatives mourn over Julia, stroking her small face as her body lays on a metal table in the morgue.
An Al Jazeera reporter was killed in an Israeli strike on Saturday in the al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.
Ahmed Wishah, a photojournalist, was 25 years old, and was one of three people killed in Saturday’s strike on a house in the camp and the 12th Al Jazeera journalist murdered by Israel since October 2023.
Ahmed had buried his brother, who was also a reporter, earlier this year. Mohammad Wishah was targeted by Israeli forces and killed in his car on 8 April.
The Gaza Government Media Office has counted nearly 300 journalists and media workers who have been hunted, targeted and assassinated by Israel in the last two and a half years since the start of the genocide.
At least seven Palestinians were killed in additional attacks on Saturday, including in Gaza City, where a pre-dawn strike on an apartment killed three members of the same family, including two children.
Hussein Al-Safadi was killed with his two daughters, 4-year-old Zaina and 14-year-old Lana. His 9-year-old son, Omar, was critically wounded in the bombing, and had to have his leg amputated.
Reporter Saed Hasballah filmed scenes at the hospital where the bodies of the al-Safadi family members were taken, as well as those injured in the strike.
Local reporters say that Omar’s amputated leg was buried alongside the bodies of his father and sisters.
A man was killed and at least eight others were wounded when an Israeli drone bombed a group of people in Khan Younis, and Israeli strikes in the northern city of Beit Lahiya killed a man and a woman. Israeli drone attacks wounded at least four people in Gaza City.
James Elder, the spokesperson for the United Nations children’s fund UNICEF, remarked on the escalating and unrelenting Israeli attacks against children in Gaza.
UN commission report: Israel deliberately targets children
In related news, a new report published by a UN commission of inquiry this week highlighted Israel’s deliberate hunting and targeting of Palestinian children in Gaza and the West Bank.
The report, “The essence of childhood has been destroyed,” draws on the commission’s 2025 conclusion finding that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
This new report says that “the intense scale and systematic nature of the Israeli military operations have continued – resulting in unprecedented death, injury and trauma of Palestinian children.”
Amongst some of the data in the 94-page report are that Israel has killed 20,000 children and injured 44,000 more between October 2023 and October 2025.
“Severe physical and mental injuries, mass trauma, orphanhood, separation, disability, repeated displacements, starvation and the collapse of education and healthcare have erased childhood and will continue to affect children in Gaza throughout their lives,” the report says.
Furthermore, as Palestinian and international journalists have documented for years, the report highlights how Palestinian children have been “arrested and subjected to torture and other severe forms of mistreatment in Israeli prisons and detention facilities, with no information on their whereabouts.”
Israeli forces “have used sexual violence against children as part of the collective shaming and oppression, entrenched within a prolonged, ethnic, gendered and intergenerational pattern of occupation and hostilities,” the report says. The commission reiterates that the deliberate targeting of children “is one of the key elements establishing the genocidal intent of Israel and its forces to destroy the Palestinian group, in whole or in part, in Gaza.”
By targeting children, Israel is “eroding the foundational structure of Palestinian society, weakening the demographic vitality, and overall capacity of the Palestinian people to sustain and exercise its right to determine its future as a people,” the report says.
The commission’s chair Srinivasan Muralidhar said, “The protection, care and survival of Palestinian children are inseparable from the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future.”
During a press briefing in Geneva on 23 June, Commissioner Chris Sidoti gave his remarks on the gravity of the report’s content.
Teenagers killed
Turning to the occupied West Bank, the local Wafa news agency reported that a 32-year-old man, Mustafa al-Khatib was shot and killed by Israeli forces in the village of Sarta on 25 June, after soldiers stormed his home.
Israeli soldiers opened fire on a house in the town of al-Yamoun, near Jenin, on Wednesday, killing a 29-year-old man, Muhammad Nazem Ezzat Zayed. The Ministry of Health said that his body was being withheld by Israel.
On Monday, Israeli forces stormed the town of Beit Ummar, northwest of Hebron, killing two Palestinians, including a child.
Middle East Eye reported that Israeli forces fired at several Palestinian youth near the illegal Israeli settlement colony of Karmei Tzur, according to local reports.
The Palestinian health ministry confirmed the killing of 15-year-old Reda Sami Hassan Awad and Issa Arafat Ismail Awad, 19. The teenagers were left bleeding for an extended period, before their bodies were taken and withheld by Israeli forces.
Two other people were wounded in the attack and later taken to a hospital, where their condition was described as stable.
Israeli settlers, meanwhile, carried out pogroms and attacks on villages across the West Bank this week.
Settlers, wearing military uniforms, attacked a group of Palestinian laborers while they were working in a vineyard east of the town of Tammoun on Wednesday.
Also on Wednesday, Israeli settlers raidedthe village of Rashaydeh, near Bethlehem, firing live ammunition near peoples’ homes.
The Wafa news agency reported that dozens of settlers stormed the archaeological site in the town of Sebastia, northwest of Nablus, on Tuesday, under heavy protection from Israeli forces.
The town of Sebastia has been subjected to frequent incursions carried out by settlers and Israeli forces, especially in the archaeological area, as part of attempts to seize control of the historical site and erase its Palestinian identity, Wafa noted.
On Monday evening, Israeli settlers damaged Palestinian property in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron.
An activist speaking to the Wafa news agency said that Israeli forces stormed Khirbet Hreibet al-Nabi in Masafer Yatta, detained two brothers and took them to an unknown destination.
He pointed out that there has been continuous escalation by Israeli forces and settlers, targeting Palestinians, their property, and agricultural lands in the area.
Israeli attacks on Lebanon
In Lebanon, the country’s health ministry reported on Wednesday that 19 more people have died from wounds sustained in previous Israeli attacks, bringing the death toll since 2 March to more than 4,200.
Israeli artillery and drone strikes have continued to target villages in southern Lebanon, despite the so-called ceasefire.
Our contributor Roqayah Chamseddine reported from the south this week – here are two of her short reports from Dweir and Nabatieh on Monday, in the aftermath of recent Israeli airstrikes.
Highlighting reclamation
And now, as we always do, we wanted to highlight people expressing joy, determination and reclamation across Palestine and around the world.
The Electronic Intifada’s contributor Mohammed Asad filmed crowds of people at the Gaza beach this past week, enjoying the sea and flying kites.
He says, “A glimpse of [Palestinians] gathering on Gaza’s beach to find some relief and recreation at their only remaining open space, despite the ongoing violations and attacks by the Israeli occupation forces.”