Children shot, stabbed and pepper-sprayed in occupied West Bank

“We’re seeing attacks become increasingly coordinated,” UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) spokesperson James Elder told reporters in Geneva. “Documented incidents include children shot, stabbed, children beaten, and children pepper-sprayed.”

Some 70 children have been killed since January 2025 – at least one on average every week – and a further 850 injured, mostly by live ammunition, UNICEF says.

“All this comes amid historic levels of settler attacks,” Mr. Elder continued, explaining that March 2026 saw the highest number of Palestinians injured by settler attacks in the last 20 years.

Bludgeoned by attackers

Following a recent West Bank visit, the UNICEF spokesperson described meeting an eight-year-old who had been beaten with a piece of wood in a settler attack and hospitalized for head injuries.

The boy’s mother “had both her arms broken when she reached across to protect her four-month-old baby, putting therefore her arms between her baby and the attacker’s club”.

Mr. Elder also highlighted the prevalence of education-related attacks, including the killing, injury and detention of students, as well as the demolition of schools.

“Schools, which should be places of safety and stability, are increasingly becoming places of panic,” he stressed.

“I walked with schoolchildren through the West Bank so as to try and help them avoid any attacks,” the UNICEF spokesperson recounted. “It’s interesting to watch them walk…They don’t walk in a straight line because they’re constantly looking over their shoulder.”

“This is a walk to school. It’s become a walk through fear,” he insisted.

Record detention numbers

Mr. Elder also reported on a “sharp rise” in the arrest and the detention of Palestinian children from the occupied territory, saying that 347 of them are being held in Israeli military detention “for alleged security-related offences” – the highest number in eight years.

“Alarmingly, more than half of these children, 180, are held under administrative detention and without the procedural safeguards, including detention without regular access to legal counsel and the right to challenge detention,” he said.

Gaza children killed and maimed

Meanwhile in Gaza, Mr. Elder said that since the October 2025 ceasefire, the UN has documented at least 229 children killed and 260 injured.

Dr Reinhilde Van de Weerdt, the UN World Health Organization (WHO)’s representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, told reporters that some 10,000 children in the devastated Strip live with life-changing injuries.

Overall, an estimated 43,000 of the 172,000 people injured in Gaza since October 2023 have sustained such trauma, affecting limbs, the spinal cord or brain. Almost 2,500 people have been injured since the October 2025 ceasefire.

“Of the 2,277 people that have had a limb amputated, less than 25 per cent have been fitted with permanent prosthetics,” Dr Van de Weerdt said, due to a severe shortage of prosthetics in Gaza.

Amputees denied prosthetic limbs

Speaking from Jerusalem, the WHO representative explained that no less than 18 shipments of rehabilitation-related supplies such as wheelchairs or prosthetic limbs are pending clearance to enter Gaza, with waiting times ranging from 130 days to more than a year.

In total, more than 50,000 conflict-related injuries require long-term rehabilitation; no rehabilitation facilities are functional in the enclave.

“Every day that rehabilitation services in Gaza remain under-resourced is a day that preventable disability risks become permanent,” she concluded.