UN Human Rights condemns repeated Israeli attacks on police personnel in Gaza

The UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory condemns Israeli forces’ routine targeting of police personnel in Gaza in repeated attacks. Since January 2026, UN Human Rights has recorded at least twelve attacks against police, killing at least 53 civilians, including 35 police personnel, 5 boys, and 1 woman. Four attacks were recorded in May alone, killing 12 policemen.

Israeli attacks against police personnel have been reported during ordinary law enforcement operations, including directing traffic and patrolling streets and markets. The pattern demonstrated disregard for civilian lives, including that of police personnel, with several strikes taking place in crowded areas, killing, in addition to police personnel, internally displaced persons, children, and prison inmates.

On 23 May, an Israeli strike struck a police checkpoint in the Al Tawam area, Gaza City, killing at least five police officers and two others, including a boy. On 24 April 2026, an Israeli drone struck a police vehicle carrying out a law enforcement operation in the Beer 19 area of Al Mawasi camp, west of Khan Younis — a crowded encampment of displaced Palestinians. The attack killed four policemen, as well as three other men and a nine-year-old boy from nearby tents. It occurred at the time of sunset prayers, when many Palestinians were moving from their tents to a nearby mosque.

On 31 January 2026, an Israeli airstrike hit Ash Sheikh Radwan Police Station, northwest of Gaza City, killing at least 11 Palestinians, including five police officers, one of them a woman. Six more people, including a boy, were also killed in the airstrike, including inmates and people visiting the station for services.

The pattern of attacks raises concerns that Israeli forces apply no distinction between police personnel and fighters belonging to armed groups in Gaza. However, under international humanitarian law, police personnel are civilians who are protected against attack, unless and for such time as they directly participate in hostilities. Attacks targeting police personnel simply for performing ordinary law enforcement and policing functions would amount to war crimes.

The attacks also fit a broader pattern of Israel’s systematic failure to take constant care to spare civilians and civilian objects in its conduct of hostilities in Gaza. Even in the event that one or several of these attacks targeted fighters, the location and timing of the attacks in crowded areas and the use of weapons with wide-area effects indicate that Israeli forces have failed to take feasible precautions to avoid and minimize incidental loss of civilian life.

“As an occupying power, Israel has obligations under international humanitarian law to ensure, as far as possible, that Palestinians have public order and safety. Instead, the systematic targeting and dismantling of public governance institutions has created chaos with devastating impact on civilians,” said Ajith Sunghay, Head of UN Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. “Nearly eight months have passed since the announcement of a ceasefire, and there is no end in sight for the killings, the turmoil, and the misery.”

Attacks on Gaza over Eid kill 26, as Israeli forces push deeper into the strip

UN Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OHCHR OPT) condemns the increase in Israeli attacks in Gaza since the eve of Eid Al Adha on Tuesday, 26 May. At least 26 Palestinians were killed since Tuesday including six women and seven children as Palestinian families prepared to observe Eid amid displacement, deprivation, and insecurity.

Three airstrikes on 26 May killed 12 Palestinians. In the early morning hours, one more 14-year-old girl died of injuries sustained in an Israeli airstrike the day before that also killed a 30-year-old woman and a five-year-old girl according to initial information. Since the announcement of a ceasefire, at least 32 children and eight women have been killed in Israeli attacks in which fatalities were exclusively women and children.

One of the airstrikes on 26 May killed four men in eastern Al Maghazi camp, Middle Gaza, reportedly after they resisted attempts to search their homes by armed gangs allegedly supported by the Israeli military. Another airstrike hit a car in Al Mawasi, Khan Younis, killing two men. The third airstrike struck an apartment in Al Rimal, Gaza City, and killed a newly appointed commander of Hamas’s Al Qassam Brigades together with his wife, his two sons, aged 15 and 22, his daughter, aged 9, and a woman passerby.

On the first day of Eid Al Adha, 27 May, an Israeli airstrike in central Gaza City reportedly killed at least ten: four girls, one boy, three women, and two men allegedly affiliated with Al Qassam Brigades.

Since the announcement of a ceasefire, Israeli forces have killed 922 Palestinians in attacks across Gaza, bringing the total death toll since 7 October 2023 to nearly 73,000.

OHCHR OPT has consistently warned that Israel’s attacks in Gaza violate international humanitarian law’s principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution in attacks. A recent OHCHR OPT report also concluded that the totality of Israeli conduct in Gaza raises serious concerns about Israel’s compliance with its obligations to prevent acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention.

The Israeli blockade on Gaza is also still depriving Palestinians of necessities, including adequate shelter, essential medicines, and food items. Almost everyone is displaced and concentrated into less than half the land area of Gaza— hemmed in by Israeli ground forces that continue to move west, displacing families and pushing them into a progressively narrower strip of land. In recent days, multiple displacement orders were issued, forcing people out of their shelters. The Israeli Prime Minister announced yesterday that he had directed Israeli forces to expand their deployment to cover 70 per cent of Gaza. The continued contraction of areas available to civilians raises grave concerns about access to humanitarian assistance, and the ability of displaced families to find any meaningful safety.

“Our concerns about the commission of war crimes in Gaza have not stopped,” said Ajith Sunghay, Head of UN Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. “It is difficult enough to navigate life in chronic displacement in the ruins of Gaza, under blockade, and after Israeli attacks virtually destroyed every essential system: healthcare, education, food production, law enforcement and civil order. Continuing military attacks on a population living under these conditions is unthinkable.”

Child and man killed near school in Al Mughayyir as settler militarization intensifies

UN Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OHCHR OPT) condemns the killing of 14-year-old Aws Hamdi Naasan and 35-year-old Jihad Abu Naiem by Israeli settlers on 21 April in Al Mughayyir village in the occupied West Bank. It also condemns the killing of 25-year-old Odeh Awawdeh in a separate settler attack in Deir Dibwan, east of Ramallah. The killings continue a growing pattern of unchecked violence by a settler movement that is militarized and shielded by the state.

In Deir Dibwan, settlers entered the village and clashed with residents with an armed settler shooting and killing 25-year-old Odeh Awawdeh. Israeli security forces raided the town and closed its entrances during the incident, detaining 30 Palestinian men who were later released. According to Israeli media reports, Israeli security forces also held several settlers for questioning following the incident.

Settlers also attacked Al Mughayyir around noon on Tuesday and opened fire towards the boys’ school west of the village. Residents of Al Mughayyir circulated a video showing the shooting of the child while sheltering with others just outside his school as gunshots are heard from a distance. Eyewitnesses told OHCHR OPT that one of two armed settlers in partial uniform was shooting at the school, with four masked members of Israeli security forces in full uniform present at the scene.

The Israeli military issued a statement claiming that the incident occurred when a car carrying “civilians including a reservist soldier” stopped when stones were allegedly hurled. The statement said the reservist exited the vehicle and shot at suspects. According to Israeli media, the reservist was later suspended and an investigation was initiated.

At least nine Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of 2026 by settlers later identified by the Israeli military as reservist soldiers.

This convergence of settler and soldier is the result of measures taken by the Israeli authorities to intensify the militarization of the settler movement since 7 October 2023, including the enlistment and arming of thousands of settlers as reservists in regional battalions known as Hagmar. These measures also include arming and empowering settlements’ emergency response squads known as Kitat Konenut, and the relaxation of gun licensing requirements for Israelis, including settlers.

Across the West Bank, Palestinians are reporting attacks by men who are clearly known to them as settlers, but who are dressed in full or partial military uniform and are often carrying state-issued assault rifles and military gear. Palestinian survivors of such attacks describe their attackers as “settlers in uniform.”

Settler attacks on Palestinian communities are often carried out with the active support and participation of uniformed Israeli security forces, even when there is no ambiguity that the perpetrators are settlers.

Since 7 October 2023, 1,088 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank, including 238 children. This includes 34 by settlers, 1,040 by Israeli security forces, and 14 Palestinians whose killings cannot be definitively attributed because Israeli security forces and settlers were attacking and shooting together.

No Israeli soldier has served a single day in prison for killing a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank since at least 2017. The only recorded conviction was in 2020 for which the sentence was three months of military service and three months of suspended jail time.

Settlers’ impunity is equally systematic. According to the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, 93.6% of all investigations of settler violence in the occupied West Bank between 2005 and 2025 were closed without indictments, and only 3% led to partial or full convictions with lenient sentences.

“Israeli policies have erased whatever line that ever existed between settler and state violence. And the systematic impunity for killing Palestinians is the backbone of this non-stop horror,” said Ajith Sunghay, head of OHCHR OPT. “The international community must insist on meaningful accountability for the perpetrators of all unlawful killings in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to stop the bloodshed.”

Briefing on UN Human Rights High Commissioner's report on Israeli settlements Remarks by Ajith Sunghay, Head of UN Human Rights - Palestine

Since the end of the period covered by this report, the pace of the concerted efforts by the Israeli government to seize as much Palestinian land as possible, with as few Palestinians in it as possible, is only becoming more relentless. To this end, Palestinians are pushed out of their homes and off their lands every day, to make room for more expansion of illegal settlements.

Israeli senior officials’ statements point to a policy to thwart Palestinian statehood and to do maximum, irreversible damage to Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

Today, I will brief you on just a few trends that continued to intensify after the period covered by the report.

First, an enabling policy and legislative environment continues to facilitate settlement expansion. In February 2026, the Israeli cabinet adopted decisions that will further extend Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank, allow more Israeli land seizures, and allow settlers to purchase land from Palestinians in an environment where such transactions cannot be considered voluntary.

Second, Palestinians live with even more violence, restrictions and discrimination than they did just four months ago at the end of the reporting period.

Since the beginning of 2026, Israeli settlers have killed seven Palestinians across the West Bank — a significantly increased rate compared to the eight Palestinians killed by settlers in all of 2025.

Since the start of the conflict in the region on 28 February, the situation has become worse. Israeli security forces have continued to kill Palestinians with impunity, including a killing of a 17-year-old this morning, and an incident last Sunday when they opened fire on a car in Tubas and killed two parents with their two sons aged five and six.

In the same timeframe, Israeli security forces have also launched daily raids across the West Bank, seized dozens of Palestinian homes for several hours or several days to use as interrogation centres, and detained at least 200 Palestinians including for social media posts labelled as “incitement” or “glorification of the enemy”.

Israeli authorities have tightened the already heavy, discriminatory closures and movement restrictions across the West Bank, tearing communities apart and impeding Palestinians’ access to healthcare, livelihoods, education, and basic services.

Yet, Israeli settlers are roaming free with complete impunity, often armed, forcing Palestinian family after Palestinian family off their lands. As a result, at least nine Palestinian communities have been fully or partially displaced since 28 February, mostly in the northern Jordan Valley.

Over the weekend, we received harrowing accounts from the residents of one of the last standing communities there, Khirbet Humsa. According to our monitoring, dozens of settlers attacked the community and assaulted Palestinian men and women in front of their children, stole livestock, and apparently sexually assaulted a young man in a horrifying way.

This violence is clearing Palestinians from the area while a new separation barrier is being constructed that will close this part of the northern Jordan Valley to Palestinians entirely.

Third, settlement expansion is also accelerating.

Last December, Israeli authorities approved 19 new settlements. This includes settlements in the northern West Bank where, last year, Israeli security forces had expelled at least 32,000 Palestinians who remain displaced to this day.

In January 2026, Israeli authorities issued tenders for the construction of thousands of settlement units in the so-called E1 area. This expansion will likely sever East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank and disrupt territorial continuity in the West Bank between north and south.

Before I close, I want to stress that Palestinians in Gaza are also still living under conditions of precarity and dehumanization, even five months after the ceasefire.

671 Palestinians were killed in Israeli military operations since this ceasefire, both in the vicinity of Israeli forces’ deployment lines, and far away in homes, tents, and on the streets. Thousands remain missing, buried under rubble or forcibly disappeared. The entry and flow of humanitarian aid is not reliable as quantities change, many essential goods are still blocked, and crossings are not dependably open.

The events of the past two and a half years in the Occupied Palestinian Territory have not only caused one of the worst humanitarian disasters of our lifetimes but also presented a severe human rights crisis, with the risk of further reverberations across the region and the world. This is a time to strengthen respect for human rights and humanitarian law. Ending the disturbing trends of violations, occupation and impunity in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is a good place to start.

It is reported today that the Israeli military killed at least 32 Palestinians trying to access food today at distribution points set up in northwestern Rafah and Middle Gaza by the so-called ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’ (GHF) and Safe Research Solutions (SRS), an American security company tasked by Israel with distributing food.

In the early morning of 1 June, the Israeli military reportedly shot at Palestinians trying to reach the aid distribution points in northwestern Rafah. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, there were over 200 Palestinian casualties, including 31 killed and dozens seriously injured. Around the same time, in a similar incident close to another distribution point south of the Netzarim corridor in Middle Gaza, at least 1 person was shot and killed, and 42 were injured. While more information is being gathered, in both locations, the casualties reportedly include children and women.

The killings today follow numerous reports of the lethal use of firearms against Palestinians approaching GHF distribution points in Rafah and Middle Gaza since this new mechanism was established late last month. Between 27 and 31 May, the UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) had already recorded daily violence connected with the mechanism, including reports of at least 19 Palestinians killed and 80 injured in total. At least 2 Palestinians were reportedly missing.

The UN Human Rights Office OPT stresses once more that Israel’s militarised humanitarian assistance mechanism violates international standards on aid distribution, endangers civilians, and is contributing to the catastrophic situation in Gaza. The 20 months of hostilities, Israel’s destruction of civilian infrastructure across Gaza, the almost 3 months of complete siege and blockade of Gaza, attacks on community kitchens, as well as the unlawful targeting of civilians including the police force, have led to a break down in civil order and is forcing on Palestinians the stark choice of dying from starvation or risk being killed while trying to access the meagre food that is being made available through the GHF.

The weaponisation of food for civilians and restricting or preventing their access to other life sustaining services constitute a war crime and may constitute elements of other international crimes, including genocide.

Israel, as the occupying power, has the duty, to the fullest extent of the means available to it, to ensure the provision of food and medical care for the population commensurate with their needs. They have further obligations to facilitate access by international humanitarian service providers and to facilitate the access of the civilian population to that assistance. The Office recalls that in 2024 the International Court of Justice, having found that there was a real and imminent risk of irreparable prejudice to the plausible rights of Palestinians in Gaza under the Genocide Convention, issued binding orders on Israel to take all measures to ensure, without delay, and in cooperation with the UN, the unhindered provision at scale of aid and assistance to Gaza.

As a matter of urgency, Israel must immediately comply if further unnecessary deaths of Palestinian civilians are to be prevented. 

The apparent summary execution of an UNRWA staff member in Rafah on 23 March this year is truly shocking and must be promptly investigated, and those responsible brought to justice. It reflects a chilling pattern of violations of the basic principles of International Humanitarian Law. Related to the same incident, the Israeli military appears to have shot at clearly marked ambulances and rescue vehicles, killing eight Palestinian Red Crescent Society and seven Gaza Civil Defense staff. This appears to be an incident of deliberate targeting and killing of medical and humanitarian personnel in violation of international law. These killings reflect the Israeli military’s pattern of unlawful killings since the escalation of hostilities in Gaza began in October 2023.

UN Human Rights Office has documented numerous reports of possible extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings, including the reported summary execution of members of the Anan family on 19 December 2023, the deliberate and systematic lethal targeting of members of the civilian police and the civil defence, the killing of journalists, and a pattern of attacks on fishers clearly neither participating in hostilities nor posing any threat to life or limb.

Palestinians have died in Israeli custody in situations that raise grave concerns that they were tortured and/or otherwise killed. In one example, the Israeli military arrested Dr. Adnan Ahmad Ateya Al Bursh, a senior orthopedic doctor on 17 December 2023 at Al Awda Hospital, North Gaza. He reportedly died on 19 April 2024 in Ofer Prison, an Israeli detention facility. According to witnesses he showed signs of torture and other ill-treatment, and his body is still being withheld by the Israeli authorities.

All of those reportedly killed are presumed to have been civilians and if they were targeted as such this would constitute a serious violation of IHL, as would the deliberate killing of any person within the power of a party. Under IHL, the parties to a conflict must at all times distinguish between civilians and combatants, and attacks may only be directed against combatants and other military objectives and never against civilians. Deliberately targeting or killing a civilian is a war crime.

Following the killings on 23 March, the Israeli Defense Forces dismissed the Deputy Commander of the Golani Battalion and issued a reprimand to the Commander of the 14th Brigade. Although the case was reportedly submitted to the Military Advocate General, no further accountability measures have been reported as of now. In addition, monitoring by the UN Human Rights Office confirms that such investigations in this context do not lead to effective accountability. UN Human Rights Office is gravely concerned that the prevalence of unlawful killings, including extrajudicial executions, and the repeated nature of these violations, as well as the apparent absence of effective steps from the Israeli military to repress and punish most of these cases, imply that these killings are not isolated events and indicate that they are condoned by the military and civilian hierarchy. In the absence of effective accountability within the Israeli military and judicial system, the international community must take steps to ensure effective investigations into all allegations of unlawful killings in the context of the escalation of hostilities in Gaza. 

The UN Human Rights Office in Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) condemns the Israeli military’s continuing strikes on shelters for Palestinians in Gaza over the last week – including a fourfold increase in strikes on residential buildings. These attacks have killed hundreds of civilians, injured scores of others, displaced thousands and indicate a disregard for the principles of distinction and proportionality required by international humanitarian law.

Of 629 Palestinians reportedly killed in the last week, at least 358 of them, including at least 148 children and women, were reportedly killed as a result of attacks targeting houses and IDP tents. Many more were injured or trapped under the rubble. The high number of strikes on shelters, in the context of the existing destruction of infrastructure in Gaza, raises grave concerns that not all strikes were targeting military objectives.

In addition, 9 Palestinian journalists were killed – making this past week one of the deadliest for journalists since 7 October 2023. They have a deep sense of duty to their work, but they, too, are displaced, tired and hungry like the rest of the population of Gaza. However, it appears that in many instances, these journalists may have been deliberately targeted with the intention of limiting the flow of information on what is happening in Gaza and the scale of the impact that this war is having on civilians.

It is imperative that international journalists be allowed to enter Gaza and their safety ensured, in order to report freely on what is happening on the ground and to promote accountability. 

The Israeli military’s escalation of attacks in Gaza over the weekend raises further concerns that Israel is inflicting conditions of life on Palestinians increasingly incompatible with their continued existence in Gaza as a group. These latest attacks, which are forcing people to move while they are being bombed, the methodical destruction of entire neighborhoods, and the denial of humanitarian assistance underline an apparent push for a permanent demographic shift in Gaza that is in defiance of international law and tantamount to ethnic cleansing. Palestinian civilians are dying under the bombs or from hunger. This is intolerable, and a ceasefire must be immediately agreed and implemented.

On 19 May the Israeli Defense Forces announced that they had struck '160 terror targets" across Gaza over the period of one day, which in the context of the existing destruction of infrastructure in Gaza, raises grave concerns that not all strikes were targeted at military objectives. Furthermore, the pattern of strikes on Internally Displaced People’s (IDP) tents and residential buildings, as well as on crowded hospitals, indicates that little, if any, care is being taken to protect the lives of civilians in Gaza, while reports of the use of weapons with wide area effects suggest deliberate, indiscriminate attacks.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation is beyond description. For the third consecutive month, Israel continues to prevent the entry and distribution of any items essential for life. Mass displacement continues as a result of bombings and strikes, the humanitarian catastrophe, and displacement orders, some of which no longer even identify areas where civilians should move. Around 150,000 people reportedly have been displaced in the last 24 hours alone. Displaced Palestinians are being forced onto the streets, with no shelter, and in most cases with no food, water or medical care. On 19 May, Israel issued more displacement orders impacting large areas of Khan Younis and Deir El Balah, which will result in further massive displacement, death, destruction, and push people into smaller areas.

Those who have been forced from their homes or other shelters remain under attack. In the last 48 hours, the Israeli military has intensified strikes, especially in North Gaza and Khan Younis and adjacent Deir al Balah in Middle Gaza, killing at least 96 Palestinians during the night and early morning of 17-18 May alone. In the last few days, the majority of Palestinians killed were in IDP tents, especially in the overcrowded Al Mawasi area in western Khan Yunis, where the Israeli military had previously unilaterally designated a “humanitarian zone.” During the late

night of 17 May, Israeli military strikes on IDP tents in Al Mawasi killed at least 36 Palestinians, including 4 cases in which parents and their children were killed together. In the morning of 18 May, an attack on another IDP tent near Alkhear Hospital in Al Mawasi, killed 4 Palestinians, a man and his 3 boys.

In less than 24 hours, 5 Palestinian journalists were reportedly killed, including a female journalist. This wave of killings of journalists came a few days after 3 other journalists were killed on 13 and 14 May.

OHCHR has verified the killing of 214 Palestinian journalists in Gaza since 7 October 2023, including 185 men and 29 women. The apparent targeting of Palestinian journalists in Gaza, combined with the denial by Israel of access of foreign journalist to Gaza for over 18 months, except a few visits controlled by IDF, appear to indicate a deliberate attempt by Israel to limit the flow of information to and from Gaza and prevent reporting on the impact of its attacks and denial of humanitarian assistance. 

The UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory calls for an end to the senseless killings in the occupied West Bank. Israel must stop all extrajudicial executions and other unlawful use of force in the occupied West Bank. Over the last two weeks, Israeli security forces have killed two Palestinian men in planned summary executions, while seven Palestinians were killed in conditions that raise concerns of the use of unnecessary or disproportionate lethal force. An Israeli woman was shot and killed on a highway in the occupied West Bank by as yet unidentified assailants. Israel must ensure that all those responsible for unlawful killings are brought to justice in fair trials.

On 8 May, Israeli undercover forces appear to have summarily executed a 30-year-old “wanted” Palestinian man in the old city of Nablus. CCTV footage suggests that an undercover officer killed the man while he tried to surrender and then shot him again as he lay on the ground injured and incapacitated, seemingly to “confirm the killing”. Claims from Israeli security forces that the man was armed and posing a threat to them appear to be contradicted by this video evidence. On 2 May, disguised Israeli security forces chased and killed a 39-year-old “wanted” Palestinian man in Balata refugee camp in Nablus. Although Israeli security forces claimed that they found a gun and cartridges in his car, they made no claim that he posed a threat to life at the moment he was shot. On 14 May, Israeli security forces reportedly fired live ammunition and injured a young Palestinian man in his thigh near the Qalandiya Refugee Camp, Jerusalem. A video shows two Israeli soldiers repeatedly kicking the man in the head, while he lay injured on the floor. The soldiers then walked away, without carrying out an arrest or providing medical assistance to the man who, in addition to live ammunition injury, reportedly incurred head hemorrhage due to the Israeli soldiers’ kicking.

Meanwhile, also on 15 May, armed Palestinians reportedly shot and killed a pregnant 30-year-old Israeli woman on the highway near Brukhin settlement, west of Salfit, also injuring her husband. Following the incident, Israeli security forces closed several checkpoints in the northern and central West Bank and imposed severe movement restrictions particularly around Burqin, and Salfit, while an Israeli minister called for “flattening” Palestinian villages in response. Israeli security forces must ensure that measures adopted following the attack complies with international law, including the prohibition of collective punishment.