The Israel Defense Forces on Thursday named nine terrorists who were killed in an airstrike the previous day on a school-turned-Hamas command base, including some whom the U.N. Relief and Works Agency had claimed were providing assistance to displaced Palestinians.
The Israeli Air Force said on Wednesday it had struck “terrorists who were operating a command-and-control center in an area previously used by the Al-Jaouni school in Nuseirat, in the central Gaza Strip.
“Ahead of the attack, many steps were taken to reduce the possibility of harm to civilians,” the IDF said in a statement, accusing Hamas of violating international humanitarian law by hiding in civilian infrastructures.
Following the airstrike, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry reported 14 deaths, and UNRWA said six of those killed were employed by the agency.
The IDF said on Thursday that as soon as UNRWA’s allegations surfaced, the military “contacted the agency for details and names in order to examine the allegation in-depth.” However, as of Thursday, the U.N. agency failed to respond “despite repeated requests.”
So far, Israel has identified nine Hamas terrorist operatives killed in the strike, at least three of whom doubled as UNRWA staffers: Muhammad Adnan Abu Zaid, Yasser Ibrahim Abu Sharar and Iyad Matar.
UNRWA on Wednesday denounced the Nuseirat strike as “endless and senseless killing,” claiming the aerial attack caused “the highest death toll among our staff in a single incident.”
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres also weighed in, calling the strike on the Hamas command center unacceptable. “These dramatic violations of international humanitarian law need to stop now,” he said.
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, hit back at Guterres in an X post on Thursday, urging the U.N. chief to “carefully check who these terrorists were, what they did in the past and what they were doing when they were eliminated before making statements.
“What is ‘unacceptable’ is the fact that the U.N. secretary-general refuses to recognize reality and continues to distort it,” Danon wrote, adding that the terrorists who operated from the former UNRWA structure “are not innocent, and it is impossible for the U.N. to continue condemning Israel for its war against vile terrorists, while Hamas continues to use women and children as human shields.”
Two months ago, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office slammed UNRWA after the Foreign Ministry published more evidence that the aid agency is employing hundreds of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists.
“Israel has told donor countries that hundreds more of UNRWA’s 13,000 local staff are active Hamas terrorists, including school teachers,” Prime Minister’s Office Public Diplomacy Directorate spokesman David Mencer told reporters during a press briefing on July 11.
“We have provided much evidence that UNRWA works hand-in-hand with Hamas,” Mencer said, referring to the Hamas server farm found under UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters, the UNRWA staffers who took part in the Oct. 7 massacre and the tunnels underneath UNRWA schools.
Israeli lawmakers before the Knesset’s summer recess passed the first readings of bills seeking to designate UNRWA as a terrorist group, cancel legal immunity of its staffers and bar it from operating from Israel.
