The United States and a number of other countries have already stopped funding the UN agency where the suspects worked.
Employees of the United Nations Relief Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) were likely involved in the brutal Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 last year. This information was conveyed to the UN leadership by the Israeli authorities.
According to the head of UNRWA, Philip Lazzarini, the Agency has launched an investigation against those employees pointed out by the Israelis. “I have decided to immediately terminate the contracts with these employees and begin an investigation. Any UNRWA employee involved in terrorist acts will be held accountable, including criminally,” the head of the agency said.
It is known that we are talking about 12 agency employees. What exact actions the suspects performed is not reported.
The spokesman for the UN Secretary-General, Stephane Dujarric, also confirmed in a comment to Reuters that Antonio Guterres has been informed about the charges brought against his subordinates. “The Secretary General is horrified by this news,” Dujarric claims.
The US State Department announced that it was temporarily withholding “additional funding” to UNRWA due to this suspicion. Following the United States, the authorities of Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Italy and Finland also announced the suspension of funding to UNRWA, reports the BBC.
The Palestinian Authority and Hamas called for preventing the cessation of the work of UNRWA, on which the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank largely depends.
Hamas attack on Israel on October 7
As wrote, on October 7 last year, the terrorist group Hamas, which is the de facto government in the Gaza Strip, carried out a massive attack on Israel. Taking advantage of the mistakes of the Israeli security forces, several thousand Hamas militants and, probably, civilian residents of the Gaza Strip broke into the border areas of Israel, where they committed massacres – murders, torture, rape.
According to Israel, about 1,200 Israelis and third-country nationals, mostly civilians, were killed in the attack. More than 3 thousand were injured. Hamas also kidnapped about 240 Israelis and foreigners, who were taken to the Gaza Strip.
To rescue the hostages and completely eliminate the threat from Hamas, Israel launched a large-scale military operation in the Gaza Strip – the largest in at least several decades.
