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JERUSALEM — The United Nations said Monday it has fired additional staff members from its agency for Palestinian refugees after an internal investigation found they may have been involved in the Hamas-led October 7 attack against Israel.
The UN secretary-general’s office announced the move in a brief statement to journalists Monday. Farhan Haq, deputy spokesperson for the secretary-general, did not elaborate on the UNRWA staffers’ likely role in the attack or on the evidence that prompted its decision.
“We have sufficient information in order to take the actions that we’re taking — which is to say, the termination of these nine individuals,” Haq said.
UNRWA previously fired 12 staffers and put seven staffers on administrative leave without pay over the claims. The group of nine staffers the UN announced it had fired includes some from each group, said Juliette Touma, communications director for UNRWA.
The UN did not clarify how many have now been fired from the agency in total.
The UN’s internal watchdog has been investigating the agency since Israel in January accused 12 UNRWA staffers of being involved in the October 7 attack on Israel, in which Hamas fighters killed 1,200 people and abducted some 250 others.
That prompted many governments, including Canada and top donor the United States, to suspend funding to the agency, threatening its efforts to deliver aid in Gaza. Canada and several countries have since resumed payments.
Fears of an all-out regional war are growing as Lebanese terror group Hezbollah said it launched a drone attack early Monday on northern Israel that the Israeli military said wounded two Israeli troops. The violence follows the killings last week of a senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon and Hamas’s top political leader in Iran.
The Iranian-backed Hezbollah said it targeted a military base in northern Israel in response to “attacks and assassinations” by Israel in several villages in southern Lebanon. The attack did not appear to be the more intense retaliation that’s expected from Iran and its allied militias.
Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged near-daily strikes for the past 10 months during the war in Gaza. But last week’s assassinations of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran’s capital and Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukur in Beirut sent regional tensions soaring.
The head of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard threatened Israel on Monday over the assassination of Haniyeh, warning that Israel was “digging its own grave” with its actions against Hamas.
Israel’s defence minister says the military is ready for a “swift transition to offence.”
The head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Michael Kurilla, arrived in Israel on Monday to assess the security situation.
The United States has deployed extra fighter jets and warplanes to the region to support Israel.
“Your arrival in Israel at this time is a direct translation of U.S. support for Israel into action,” Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told Kurilla during their meeting, according to a military statement.
“The relationship between Israel and the United States is unshakeable.”
Meanwhile Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Jolie and her G7 counterparts issued a joint statement calling for a de-escalation of tensions in the Middle East.
The foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States issued the statement, along with the High Representative of the European Union.
The statement, which was released Sunday by Global Affairs Canada, says the ministers are expressing their “deep concern at the heightened level of tension in the Middle East, which threatens to ignite a broader conflict in the region.”
It urges all parties to refrain from retaliatory violence, saying “No country or nation stands to gain from a further escalation in the Middle East.”
The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, The Canadian Press
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