'Terrible betrayal' in UN agency: Report: Nine UNRWA staff may have been involved in attack on Israel

Nine employees of the UN aid agency UNRWA “may have been involved in the attack on Israel on October 7”. 2023. All will be fired, internal services said on Monday UN after investigating 19 cases of alleged involvement of UNRWA staff in attacks.

Any involvement of our employees in the attacks is a “terrible betrayal” of the work we are committed to doing for the Palestinian people, said UN Secretary-General's spokesman Farhan Haq.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) employs over 30,000 staff, 13,000 of whom are in the Gaza Strip.

Most of them are Palestinians. Funded by foreign governments, UNRWA is responsible for running schools, providing medical care and social benefits.

At the beginning of the year Israel accused 12 UNRWA staff of direct involvement in the October 7 attack, later adding that a significant percentage – more than 10 percent – ​​of the organization's Gazan staff belong to the terrorist group Hamas and its ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad. UNRWA has denied the accusations that its staff are linked to Hamas, saying Israel has never provided convincing evidence.

The allegations prompted several countries to suspend funding to UNRWA, but most reversed their decisions after an external commission found no evidence of Israel's claims that a “significant number” of agency staff were linked to Hamas.

In the attack on October 7, 2023, nearly 1,200 people were killed and 251 kidnapped. Hamas's terrorist attack on Israel started the war in the Gaza Strip that continues to this day, in which – according to local authorities – nearly 40,000 Palestinians have died. The destroyed Gaza Strip is facing a large-scale humanitarian crisis, and most of the population has become internally displaced.