UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed his shock at the number of Palestinian children killed by the Israeli Occupation in 2021.

Guterres, in the annual report on Children and Armed Conflict, which aims at documenting violations against children in conflicts around the world, condemned the Israeli Occupation for its repeated attacks on Palestinian children.

The report covers the crimes committed by the Israeli Occupation Forces over the past year, including the aggression on the Gaza Strip, which led to the death of a large number of Palestinian citizens, including children.

Guterres said he was “shocked by the killing and injuring of Palestinian children by Israeli forces in airstrikes on densely populated areas, through the use of live ammunition, and at the continued lack of accountability for these violations.”

He reiterated his demand for the Israeli Occupation Forces “to exercise the utmost restraint in order to protect lives and to put in place preventive measures, and to strengthen their procedures to end and prevent any excessive use of force against children.”

Guterres called on the Israeli Occupation to investigate every case in which live ammunition was used, as he acknowledged, for the first time, that “there is a systematic absence of accountability for Israeli violations against Palestinian children.”

The report also dealt with the issue of children detained in Israeli Occupation prisons, where Guterres stressed: “the need for Tel Aviv to abide by international standards regarding the detention of children, and to end administrative detention, ill-treatment, and violence.”

In the report, he expressed his concern about the increasing attacks carried out by the Israeli Occupation “on schools and educational institutions that serve children and their educational process.”

According to the report, in 2021, the Israeli Occupation Forces killed 78 Palestinian children, maimed another 982, and detained 637.