UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Nearly 25,000 children caught in conflict were victims of a record number of violations last year, including killings, rape and recruitment to fight, and for the first time, government forces — not armed groups — were the main perpetrators, a new United Nations report says.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ annual report, released this week, has a blacklist of violators against children: government forces from eight nations and 67 armed groups from 16 countries and territories.
The number of violations — which also include abductions, attacks on schools and hospitals, and denial of humanitarian access to help them — rose for a fourth straight year to 38,558, according to the report that is based on verified U.N. data. It said 24,174 children, a third of them girls, were affected, with several thousand subjected to multiple violations.
“The scale and persistence of these violations demand more than acknowledgment — they demand resolve,” the U.N. special representative for children in armed conflict, Vanessa Frazier, said in an analysis of the report.
She urged the 193 U.N. member nations to confront the findings and “recognize that protecting children is not an aspiration but an obligation, and that the decisions taken today will shape the futures they may or may not live to claim.”
For the first time since the U.N. authorized monitoring of abuses against children in conflict 30 years ago, the report said that “government forces were responsible for a majority of grave violations.”
Topping the 2025 list are the Israeli military and its security forces, with 12,445 violations. That is followed by Congo, with 4,114 violations, and Myanmar, Somalia and armed groups in Nigeria, all with over 2,000 violations. Government forces from Sudan, South Sudan, Syria and Russia's armed forces in Ukraine are also on the blacklist.
The blacklist also includes Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which carried out the Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attacks in southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and sparked the war in Gaza. The U.N. says Israeli settlers were responsible for 326 grave violations last year, and Guterres warned that if these attacks continue, the settlers could be put on the blacklist.
The report says government forces were “the main perpetrators” of 6,266 killings of children — a 34% increase from last year — as well as 7,958 injuries.
The U.N. said it verified the killing of 2,668 Palestinian children by Israeli forces in Gaza and 55 Palestinian kids in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. The U.N. received reports of the killing of an additional 4,588 children in Gaza and injuries to 346 Israeli children that it is in the process of verifying, the report said.
Guterres said he was “appalled by the magnitude of grave violations against children” in Palestinian territories and Israel, “gravely alarmed by the staggering increase in grave violations” perpetrated by Israeli forces, and “deeply alarmed at the staggering rise in attacks carried out by Israeli settlers” affecting children with no accountability.
The U.N. chief urged Israel to develop and sign a plan with the United Nations to end the killing and maiming of children and attacks on schools and hospitals with time-bound commitments.
Israel's U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon accused Guterres of blurring “the fundamental distinction between a democratic state fighting for its survival and murderous terrorist organizations” like Hamas and Islamic Jihad rather than standing with the victims of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. He said this will be Guterres' legacy — “one of the greatest moral failures in the history of the United Nations.”
Frazier, the special representative for children in conflict, told reporters Thursday that there are a number of reasons government forces were responsible for more violations this year. That includes “the impunity that we are seeing towards international law” and changes in warfare from battlefields to densely populated places using new weapons like drones and explosives that cover a wide area, she said.
“Children were impacted while escaping fighting, seeking food, water or medical care, and navigating areas heavily contaminated by explosive remnants of war, often contributing to life-long disabilities,” she said in the analysis of the report.
The U.N. said it verified the recruitment and use of 6,607 children in conflict, with the highest numbers in Congo, Nigeria, Haiti, Somalia and Colombia. It said 5,129 youngsters were abducted, mainly in Nigeria, Congo, Somalia, Myanmar and Mozambique.
And it reported 1,783 child victims of rape and sexual violence, with the highest number in Congo, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan and Haiti.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during a press conference at the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) in Port-au-Prince, Tuesday, June 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The remnants of Tropical Storm Arthur battered parts of the southeastern United States with drenching rains and strong wind on Thursday, tearing through buildings, flooding homes and launching water rescues along the Gulf Coast.
Severe weather also pummeled parts of the Midwest, where a separate line of strong storms knocked down structures and left tens of thousands of residents without power.
Arthur was the first tropical storm of the season in the Atlantic basin, and although it quickly downgraded within a day of forming, the lingering system created dangerous conditions in Louisiana and Mississippi. In one rural Louisiana parish, more than 2 feet of rain fell in 48 hours and most of that soaking came Thursday, said Donald Jones, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Lake Charles.
It flooded at least 200 homes in Avoyelles Parish, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) northwest of the state capital, Louisiana state Rep. Daryl Deshotel said.
“Even by this region’s standards, that’s catastrophic rain,” Jones said.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said in a social media post Thursday night that a worker on a county road crew in the southwestern part of the state had been killed while helping with storm cleanup operations. The cause of the death was not disclosed.
Thirty homes below the Anchor Lake dam in southern Mississippi were being evacuated as a precaution due to concerns that rising waters could overwhelm the spillways and compromise the structure, Reeves said. Residents in the area were being encouraged to seek higher ground.
Coni Dubois said several inches of water flooded her home overnight in Houma, southwest of New Orleans, but others in the community had worse damage. She’s lived through many hurricanes and other storms, but never witnessed thunder and lightning like this.
“It was unbelievable, it literally sounded like hell broke open,” Dubois said. “I thought for sure we had a tornado on top of us. The lightning and the thunder was so consistent, the whole house was lit up like daylight for about 20 minutes.”
The National Guard and state wildlife officials were working with rescue crews, officials said.
One tornado had been confirmed in Avoyelles Parish, along with three others near New Orleans, the weather service said.
Amid relentless rainfall in central Louisiana, Cody Coco said he rescued stranded workers — waist deep in water —- at a cypress sawmill operation he runs near his home in Avoyelles Parish. He said the water has continued to rise all throughout the day.
Coco, 40, said he also used a boat to rescue the four pigs he kept in a pen. Video he shared on his Facebook page shows the hogs swimming out of their enclosure in a torrent of murky water. Coco says they are now safe on higher ground.
“If I’d left them in the pen, they’d have drowned,” Coco said. “They were happy to see me.”
New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno posted a video on Facebook describing relatively minor damage and cleanup efforts. Ahead of the storm, police prepared boats and set up barricades in flood-prone areas. They also opened sandbag distribution sites across Louisiana.
Just across the Mississippi River in Avondale, a tornado wrecked four homes, Jefferson Parish spokeswoman Rachel Strassel said. Two people were hospitalized with minor injuries and later released.
The Midwest was also dealing with damage after a strong line of storms.
A tornado was reported Wednesday evening near Effingham, Illinois, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) southeast of Springfield. Several people suffered minor injuries, officials said.
Firefighters responded to damaged homes, collapsed structures, car crashes, downed power lines, gas leaks and blocked roads, Effingham Fire Chief Brant Yochum said.
Marla Washburn and her husband, Todd, hunkered down in their basement as a suspected tornado tore through their neighborhood about 70 miles (110 kilometers) north in Blue Mound. They could hear debris smacking into their house and a school across the street lost its roof, which came crashing onto their home.
“The whole house shook,” Washburn said in a phone interview, adding that the neighborhood looks like Armageddon.
“You don’t know whether to laugh or cry, but we’re OK,” she said. “You look at it and you go, ‘I don’t even know where to start to clean up.'”
A snapped power pole hangs over a car lot at Joseph Cadillac in Florence, Ky, Thursday, June 18, 2026, after severe weather moved through the region. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Damage from a collapsed roof is seen at Big Red Appliances & Mattresses in Florence, Ky, Thursday, June 18, 2026, after severe weather moved through the region. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Roof and sign damage are seen at Big Red Appliances & Mattresses in Florence, Ky, Thursday, June 18, 2026, after severe weather moved through the region. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
This grab from a video shot by WCPO-TV shows an electricity pole damaged by the storm, on Thursday, June 18, 2026, in Florence, Kentucky. (WCPO-TV via AP)
