Some 70 children have been killed since January 2025 (at least one on average every week) and another 850 have been injured, mostly by live ammunition, UNICEF says.
“All of this comes amid historic levels of settler attacks,” Elder continued, explaining that March 2026 saw the highest number of Palestinians injured by settler attacks in the past 20 years.
Beaten by attackers
Following a recent visit to the West Bank, the UNICEF spokesperson described his encounter with an eight-year-old boy who had been hit with a piece of wood in a settler attack and hospitalized with head injuries.
The child’s mother “had both arms broken when she tried to protect her four-month-old baby, so she put her arms between her baby and the attacker’s club.”
Elder also highlighted the prevalence of education-related attacks, including murders, injuries and arrests 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 to try to help them avoid any attacks,” said the UNICEF spokesperson. “It’s interesting to watch them walk… They don’t walk in a straight line because they’re constantly looking over their shoulders.”
“This is a path to school. It has become a path through fear,” he insisted.
Record numbers of arrests
Elder also reported a “sharp increase” in the arrest and detention of Palestinian children from the occupied territory, saying that 347 of them are being held in Israeli military detention “for alleged security-related crimes” – the highest number in eight years.
“It is alarming that more than half of these children, 180, are under administrative detention and without procedural guarantees, including detention without regular access to legal assistance and the right to challenge detention,” he said.
Gaza children murdered and maimed
Meanwhile, in Gaza, 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, representative of the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, told reporters that some 10,000 children in the devastated Strip are living with life-changing injuries.
In total, an estimated 43,000 of the 172,000 people injured in Gaza since October 2023 have suffered such trauma affecting the extremities, spinal cord or brain. Nearly 2,500 people have been injured since the October 2025 ceasefire.
“Of the 2,277 people who have had a limb amputated, less than 25 percent have been fitted with permanent prostheses,” said Dr. Van de Weerdt, due to the severe shortage of prostheses in Gaza.
Amputees are denied prostheses
Speaking from Jerusalem, the WHO representative explained that no fewer than 18 shipments of rehabilitation-related supplies, such as wheelchairs or prosthetics, are pending authorization to enter Gaza, with wait times ranging from 130 days to more than a year.
In total, more than 50,000 conflict-related injuries require long-term rehabilitation; There are no functional rehabilitation facilities in the enclave.
“Every day that rehabilitation services in Gaza remain under-resourced is a day that avoidable risks of disability become permanent,” he concluded.