Israeli Army Forces Disappearance of Hundreds of Missing Children in Gaza, Palestinian Center Says

The Palestinian Center for Missing Persons and Forcibly Disappeared Persons said that about 2,700 children are still under the rubble of destroyed buildings in the Gaza Strip out of about 8,000 missing, and that 21,510 children were martyred over 29 months of ongoing Israeli genocide.

“In the Gaza Strip, where most areas have been turned to rubble by the Israeli war of annihilation and residents are living under a choking Israeli blockade, the missing persons file compounds families' suffering and paralyzes some lives with the accompanying legal and social challenges”

Al-Jazeera Net

The center also said about 200 children lost contact and traces in various areas of the Gaza Strip, indicating they have either been forcibly disappeared by the Israeli army or targeted directly, leading to the loss of their bodies on the roads.

Al-Jazeera Net

It warned that the tragedy of thousands of children who remain missing or under the rubble continues, and called for urgent and effective international action to stop the “tragedy of hundreds of missing children.”

The center said it is an occasion to remind of the tragedy of hundreds of missing children who are either beneath the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip, or who disappeared on various roads.

It added that the lack of serious steps to recover the bodies and determine the fate of the missing “cements a policy of impunity” and deepens the human wound in Palestinian society.

Al-Aqad’s case resurfaced after British press investigations, with Al Arabiya describing how an Israeli army sergeant, Dolev Mor Yosef, posted a selfie on his Instagram account showing him smiling with two blindfolded Palestinian women with their hands bound inside a military vehicle.

The report said the photo dates back to May 2024 and was the sole visual evidence confirming the captivity of Aisha Ahmed Bakr Al-Aqad and her daughter Huda Al-Aqad from Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.

L'Humanité

It traced the family’s timeline to December 2023, when the family of Haj Mohammed Asouli Al-Aqad decided to stay in their home in the Western Rabwat area and refused forced displacement, and said Haj Mohammed was killed by Israeli forces.

In a statement issued by the family on January 13, 2026, the family called on rights organizations and the UN to intervene immediately, saying: "We are not asking for the impossible; we simply want to know the fate of our mothers and daughters."

The report also said Israeli occupation authorities claimed the two women were released later, but did not provide any temporal or spatial evidence to support that claim.

UN human rights experts said they received information indicating that several people, including a child, had disappeared after visiting aid distribution sites in Rafah, and they said the Israeli army was “directly involved in the forced disappearances of people seeking help.”

“Smotrich calls on the Israeli government to annex the Gaza Strip”

La Croix

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) denied the allegation, saying: "inside the GHF facilities in Rafah, there is no evidence of forced disappearances," in a statement to AFP.

Le Parisien reported that seven independent United Nations experts condemned an “odious” crime in a joint statement, and said the reports of forced disappearances of civilians who are starving while trying to exercise their fundamental right to food “amount to torture.”

The same article said the UN Human Rights Office documented the deaths of 1,857 Palestinians seeking aid since the end of May, including 1,021 near the GHF sites.

It also reported that the UN said a famine had been declared in the Gaza governorate last week, accusing Israel of “systematic obstruction” of humanitarian deliveries.