Children account for more than 21,000 of the more than 74,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza since October 2023, according to Gaza health ministry figures reported on October 15, 2026 by The New Humanitarian and repeated the same week by Human Rights Watch — and the dying did not stop with the ceasefire: at least 327 children are among the more than 1,400 people killed since the truce took effect in October 2025, according to a joint statement by more than 100 humanitarian and rights organisations. This article sets out the documented record of what this war has done to Gaza's children — killed, injured, maimed, orphaned and starved — with every number attributed to the institution that produced it.
How many children have been killed and injured?
The New Humanitarian's October 15, 2026 accounting, drawn from Gaza health officials, puts the war's toll at more than 74,000 Palestinians killed, including 21,000 children, with more than 175,000 injured. Human Rights Watch, citing the Health Ministry, gives the same totals — over 74,000 dead including over 21,000 children. Two things belong with these numbers. The ministry's figures do not distinguish civilians from combatants, and Israel disputes its totals. But UN agencies have historically assessed the ministry's data as reliable, and it is the only systematic count being produced inside Gaza, where Israel has barred foreign journalists for nearly three years — the count the world's aid agencies work from. Since the ceasefire, the ministry counts at least 1,400 killed and 4,881 wounded (Human Rights Watch, October 2026), of whom at least 327 were children, according to the joint statement of more than 100 aid and rights organisations issued on October 9, 2026.
What is documented about child amputees?
UN officials and aid organisations describe Gaza's child amputees in superlatives, and the description is attributed here to them: Lisa Doughten of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told the Security Council in October 2024 that "Gaza is home to the largest cohort of child amputees in modern history," relaying UNRWA's reporting at the time that about 10 children were losing one or both legs each day. Save the Children has used the same description, and its November 2025 report on children and blast injuries found that explosive weapons in Gaza left an average of 475 children a month with potentially lifelong injuries — amputations, burns and complex fractures — during 2024. UNICEF has estimated that between 3,000 and 4,000 children in Gaza have had one or more limbs amputated. The World Health Organization reported in October 2025 that nearly 42,000 people in Gaza had life-changing injuries, one in four of them children, and that more than 5,000 people had undergone amputations.
How many children have been orphaned or left alone?
UNICEF estimated in 2024 that at least 17,000 children in Gaza were unaccompanied or separated from their families — about 1 percent of the displaced population at the time, the agency's standard estimation method in conflict zones. Reporting drawing on UNICEF officials put the number of children who had lost one or both parents at about 39,000. Those are estimates, produced when a full count was impossible, and they date from 2024; the orphaned and separated population will have grown with the toll since. Cases documented this month fit the pattern: a toddler pulled from a burning flat in Gaza City on October 14 lost her mother in the strike and her father earlier in the war, her grandfather told Middle East Eye.
What about hunger?
On August 22, 2025, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) confirmed famine in the Gaza City governorate — the first famine declaration in the Middle East — with more than 514,000 people facing catastrophic conditions. Gaza's health ministry reported that deaths from famine and malnutrition since October 2023 reached 404, including 141 children, in figures published in autumn 2025, and that more than 43,000 children under five were suffering from malnutrition as of August 2025. Israel rejected the famine finding. Beyond food: Le Monde, citing UNICEF, reported that some 700,000 children have been deprived of face-to-face formal education for nearly three consecutive years and that almost 98 percent of school buildings are damaged.
What do the figures add up to?
Taken together, the documented record is this: a child population of roughly 1.1 million — nearly half of Gaza's 2.2 million people — of whom more than 21,000 have been killed, tens of thousands injured, several thousand maimed by amputation, at least 17,000 separated from their families as of a 2024 estimate that predates another year of war, and hundreds dead of malnutrition in a famine the UN's hunger monitor confirmed and Israel disputes. Each of those numbers belongs to a named institution — the UN's agencies, its hunger monitor, its children's fund — and they publish them as the record of this war. What no party disputes is the direction of the count since the ceasefire: up, by hundreds of children and counting.
All figures are published with their source and date in the text. Gaza health ministry totals are used by UN agencies and humanitarian organisations operating in Gaza and are disputed by Israel; the amputee characterisation is attributed to UN OCHA officials and Save the Children; orphanhood figures are UNICEF estimates from 2024, labelled as estimates in the text. War Info Hub reports these figures as the documented record — produced and published by the institutions named — with Israel's dispute noted where it stands.
