so I just watched this short documentary called "blood on the altar" on Amazon. (Free to watch right now if you have Amazon prime)
so apparently several ancient Roman and Greek historians claimed that the Phoenicians, more specifically the Carthaginians, practiced institutionalized ritual infant sacrifice.
But many modern historians dismiss these claims as nothing but war propaganda.
In the video they interview 2 Harvard professors who claim that new archaeological evidence shows these sacrifices most likely did happen.
However, they also interviewed in Italian professor who was very very adamant that no human sacrifices ever occurred in the Phoenician culture and it's all just bad propaganda
So what's the deal?
The archaeological evidence just shows that there are large cemeteries with the burned remains of children in ancient Carthaginian/Phoenician cities. These cemeteries also contained the remains of animals. One line of thought is that these were all sacrifices to the gods, and burned/buried in a similar manner. There are also pre-natal/stillborn children buried there. It's possible that it was just a special ceremony for young children who had died of natural causes.
Several of Carthage's enemies(that's important) wrote about child sacrifice being prevalent, but we have nothing written by Carthaginians (or related phoenician cultures to my knowledge) about the practice.
It's one of those areas where there is no definitive answer. However, there are many accounts of child sacrifice from different cultures (Greeks/Romans/Israelites) about this practice from all over the Mediterranean. I'd say the evidence definitely stacks up in favor of sacrifice, but there's no proof from the phoenicians themselves (someone please correct me if I'm wrong here) that it was ritual sacrifice.