Israel has carried out a concerted effort to destroy Gaza’s health-care system, including by deliberately killing medical staff in the war zone, a United Nations panel said.

The Israeli military has “deliberately killed, wounded, arrested, detained, mistreated and tortured” health-care personnel and has targeted medical vehicles and facilities amid its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, a UN-backed commission said in a report out Thursday. Those violations constitute war crimes, it said.

Spokespeople for the Israeli mission to the UN, as well as the Israeli army and the foreign ministry, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment, and the UN said Israel didn’t cooperate with the investigation. Israel has previously denied targeting civilian or humanitarian facilities or staff, saying they’ve been endangered because Hamas uses such places as cover.

The commission also found that the Israel Defense Forces deliberately targeted pediatric and neonatal facilities, which has led to “incalculable suffering” especially among women and small children. Those actions could lead to the “the destruction of generations of Palestinian children and, potentially, the Palestinian people as a group,” the panel said.

Navi Pillay, who chairs the UN commission, said such action is “becoming systematic and institutionalized” due to a lack of accountability.

The report was written by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which was established by the world body’s Human Rights Council in 2021.

A June report by the commission found both Israel and Palestinian armed groups including Hamas — which is deemed a terrorist organization by the U.S. — have been committing war crimes on the Gaza Strip since the war started.

Israel and Hamas have been at war since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas that killed 1,200 people and saw about 250 taken hostage. Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since then has killed about 42,000 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilian and combatant casualties.

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