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The UN agency for Palestinian refugees has sacked nine staff members who may have been involved in Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner-general, said that following an internal UN investigation, the evidence against the nine, “if authenticated and corroborated, could indicate” that the “staff members may have been involved” in the assault.
The UN did not provide details of the evidence.
Farhan Haq, the UN’s deputy spokesman, said the body’s internal investigation “was not able to independently authenticate most of the information provided to it” as the “information used by Israeli officials to support the allegations” remained in Israel’s custody.
The probe by the Office of Internal Oversight Services found that there was insufficient evidence to suggest another nine UNRWA employees who were investigated took any part in the attack. There was no evidence in one other case, it said.
The UN launched its investigation after Israel alleged in a report to diplomats, which was leaked in January, that at least 12 of the 13,000 Palestinians UNRWA employed in Gaza had taken part in the Hamas attack.
UNRWA previously fired 10 staff, while two others accused were found to be dead. But the agency complained that Israel did not share the evidence on which its allegations were based.
Other claims in the leaked report, including that 190 Gazan employees were militant operatives of Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, have not been proven.
The US, the UK and a dozen other donors responded to Israel’s allegations by suspending about $440mn in funding to the agency.
The UK’s new Labour government last month said it would resume funding UNRWA, joining the EU and other countries in restoring aid to the agency which provides vital humanitarian assistance to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians trapped in Gaza.
About 1,200 people were killed in the October 7 attack and some 250 others were taken hostage after Hamas and other militants broke through the security barrier around Gaza.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive in the besieged strip has killed almost 40,000 people, according to Palestinian health officials, and caused a humanitarian crisis with UN agencies warning of famine and the widespread outbreak of disease.
UNRWA is the main UN agency responsible for more than 5mn Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
“The agency’s priority is to continue life-saving and critical services for Palestine Refugees in Gaza and across the region, especially in the face of the ongoing war, the instability and risk of regional escalation,” Lazzarini said in a statement.
He reiterated UNRWA’s condemnation of the October 7 attack “in the strongest possible terms”.
In a post on X, Israeli military spokesperson Nadav Shoshani said: “@UNRWA 9 of your employees might have participated in the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. And no, this isn’t evidence ‘fabricated’ by us.
“Your ‘relief’ agency has officially stooped to a new level of low, and it is time that the world sees your true face.”
UNRWA has faced a storm of attacks by parts of the Israeli political establishment that want it disbanded.
They argue that its mandate to care for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war that created Israel has perpetuated, rather than helped resolve, the protracted Arab-Israeli conflict.
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