300 investigations, 28 answers: Israel's military inquiries into killings, counted

For three years, the Israel Defense Forces have answered accusations that their troops killed or injured civilians with the same handful of words: the incident is being "looked into", "reviewed", "checked", "examined". BBC Verify decided to count what happened next. It found 300 unique incidents the military said it was investigating — and published outcomes for 28 of them. The other cases, including the killing of a mother and daughter inside Gaza's only Catholic church and a strike on a school that killed at least 93 people, remain officially "under review", some for nearly three years.

What did BBC Verify count?

Using purpose-built AI tools, BBC Verify combed through more than 60,000 reports from BBC News and Reuters mentioning Gaza, the West Bank or Lebanon, published between 7 October 2023 and 19 August 2026. It searched for incidents where people may have been killed or injured by Israeli forces and where the IDF said the incident was being investigated. That produced almost 5,000 reports. After manual checking by BBC Verify reporters, 1,343 reports met the criteria; after duplicates describing the same incident were removed, 300 unique incidents remained.

For each one, the team checked whether the IDF website carried any outcome. It found evidence that 28 cases had been closed. Of the remaining incidents, 254 have no public outcome and for 18 it is unclear whether the investigation has concluded. The 254 without outcomes break down as 158 in Gaza, 48 in the occupied West Bank, 32 in Lebanon and 16 in Israel or in IDF detention — and in more than 200 of them, at least one person was reportedly killed. BBC Verify shared all 300 cases with the IDF and asked repeatedly for their status. The military provided information on two incidents, which it said are still under review, and did not say whether any of the others had concluded.

How does the IDF investigate its own killings?

The first filter is the General Staff Fact-Finding and Assessment Mechanism (FFAM), which handles what the military calls "exceptional operational incidents". The FFAM can refer a file to the Military Advocate General (MAG), who decides whether a criminal investigation is warranted. Other incidents are handled through command-level operational reviews, which the IDF says are "intended to establish the sequence of events, identify failures and draw lessons". The results of military investigations are not routinely made public — including investigations that lead to criminal cases against soldiers.

The funnel is narrow. Freedom of Information data obtained by Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group that has monitored military investigations since 2006, shows that between October 2023 and August 2024 at least 1,456 Gaza-related incidents were referred to the FFAM. Twelve of those reviews were completed and referred to the Military Advocate General. Two resulted in criminal investigations.

What do the 28 published outcomes show?

In August 2026, the IDF published a rare report on five internal probes in Gaza. In three of them — the airstrike that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers, and two attacks that killed four Médecins Sans Frontières aid workers — the military said it did not find a basis or reasonable suspicion to begin a criminal investigation. In the other two — the killing of five-year-old Hind Rajab, and the killing of 15 Palestinian Red Crescent emergency workers, who were shot more than 100 times — the cases had been escalated to criminal investigations.

The same report said the FFAM had completed reviews of approximately 150 cases since the start of the war and transferred them to the Military Prosecution. The IDF did not say what those incidents were, and did not clarify, when BBC Verify asked, whether they are separate from the 300 cases in the BBC's count.

Which cases are still "under review"?

Nahida Anton and her daughter Samar were killed by sniper fire inside the grounds of the Holy Family church in Gaza City in December 2023, according to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. The IDF told the BBC at the time that an initial review suggested troops had been operating against a Hamas threat "in the area of the church", and that it was "conducting a thorough review of the incident". In September 2025, the military said the incident was "still being reviewed by the FFAM". Almost three years after the two women were killed, it remains under review.

One of the deadliest open files is the August 2024 strike on the al-Tabaeen school complex in Gaza City, where displaced families were sheltering. The Hamas-run civil defence agency said at least 93 people were killed, including six women and 11 children. Experts told BBC Verify that munition fragments at the scene matched a GBU-39 — a precision-guided bomb supplied by the United States. The IDF said a Hamas command and control centre had been embedded in the school, that its soldiers killed 31 fighters, and that the casualty numbers did not align with its information. It told BBC Verify the incident remains under review.

In the occupied West Bank — where, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since 11 October 2023 — BBC Verify examined more than 50 IDF investigations, at least 26 of them involving women and children killed or injured. Among them: Lujain Musleh, 16, killed outside Jenin in September 2024. Her father said she was shot in the head as she looked out of her window in Kafr Dan. The military said armed fighters had fired on its soldiers, who "fired back at a suspect who observed" them, and that the details were under review.

What does the IDF say?

The IDF told BBC Verify it "takes every allegation or report raising concerns about conduct that may be inconsistent with the law or IDF directives with the utmost seriousness". It said it "publishes information regarding the outcomes of investigations and examinations when possible, subject to legal and operational considerations, as well as restrictions relating to privacy and information security". It said it has taken disciplinary action in dozens of cases during the war, including removing soldiers from combat positions and reserve service. And it said: "Complex incidents may require considerable time to collect, cross-check, and verify the relevant factual information", adding that it "does not shorten or forgo examination or investigative procedures in order to meet external timelines".

What does the law require?

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which works in war zones to uphold the Geneva Conventions, publishes guidelines stating that investigations into potential violations of international humanitarian law should be as transparent as possible. Janina Dill, professor of international law at the University of Oxford, told BBC Verify that under the Geneva Conventions a party to an armed conflict has a responsibility to "investigate and potentially prosecute its own" — "the absolute clear bottom line" — and that the endorsed guidelines emphasise promptness, thoroughness and impartiality. "Three years into this operation, some of these investigations should have been concluded," she said.

Dan Owen of Yesh Din was blunter about the effect of delay: the IDF, he said, will often try to "prolong" investigations — "They try to stretch out these processes to the point where people forget and people don't care about them." Former senior IDF lawyer Eran Shamir-Borer pointed to the genuine challenges of collecting evidence in hostile territory amid heavy fighting, and said Israel would benefit from being more transparent. That is the ledger as it stands: 300 investigations announced, 28 answered, and hundreds of families — in Gaza, Lebanon and the occupied West Bank — still waiting for a file with their name on it to close. War Info Hub will keep this ledger open and report outcomes as they are published.