By David Brunnstrom
(Reuters) -Nine staff members of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNWRA) may have been involved in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, and have been fired, the United Nations said on Monday.
"For nine people, the evidence was sufficient to conclude that they may have been involved in the seventh of October attacks," deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq told a U.N. briefing.
He was referring to findings of the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services, which he said had completed an investigation into the alleged involvement of 19 UNRWA staff members in the attacks, two of whom have since died.
Monday's announcement confirms the dismissal of nine of them, Haq said. He said the records of the remainder would be reviewed.
Haq said all the nine individuals who the investigation concluded may have been involved were men. He did not give details of what they may have done, but said:
"For us, any participation in the attacks is a tremendous betrayal of the sort of work that we are supposed to be doing on behalf of the Palestinian people."
The United Nations launched the investigation after Israel charged in January that 12 UNRWA staff took part in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks that triggered the Gaza war. Seven more cases were brought to the U.N.'s attention in March and April.
Israel stepped up its accusations in March, saying over 450 UNRWA staff were military operatives in Gaza terrorist groups. UNRWA employs 32,000 people across its area of operations, 13,000 of them in Gaza.
Shortly after the U.N. announcement, Israeli military spokesperson Nadav Shoshani posted on social media platform X, saying "Your 'relief' agency has officially stooped to a new level of low and it is time that the world sees your true face."
The U.N,'s Haq said the United Nations investigation had made findings in relation to 19 UNRWA staff members. Apart from those who may have been involved in the attack, no evidence was obtained to support allegations of one staff member's involvement, while in the other cases the evidence was insufficient to support their involvement.
UNWRA said in March that some employees released into Gaza from Israeli detention reported having been pressured by Israeli authorities into falsely stating that the agency has Hamas links and that staff took part in the Oct. 7 attacks.
Haq said the details of the OIOS investigation were confidential and that since information used by Israeli authority officials to support their allegations have remained in their hands, "OIOS was not able to independently authenticate most of the information provided to it."
However when pressed on why the U.N. was acting against nine, he said: "We have sufficient information in order to take the actions that we're taking, which is to say, the termination of these nine individuals."
Asked if this meant the U.N. considered that the nine were "likely or highly likely" to have been part of the attacks, he replied: "That's a good way of describing it."
(Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Doina Chiacu, Costas Pitas and Alistair Bell)
