UNRWA Says Worker Killed by Sniper During Israeli Military Operation in West Bank

Palestinians stand at the entrance of the UNRWA-run University College for Educational Science Ramallah city in the occupied West Bank on Jan. 29, 2024. Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP via Getty Images

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said on Friday that one of its staff members was shot and killed during an Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank.

The worker, identified as Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad, was a sanitation laborer in El Far’a Camp in the West Bank. UNRWA said that Jawwad was shot by a sniper while on the roof of his home on Sept. 12.

This marked the first time that a UNRWA staff member has been killed in the Palestinian territory in more than a decade, according to the U.N. agency.

“UNRWA mourns the death of a colleague killed overnight in El Far’a Camp, in the northern West Bank,” the agency said in a statement. It stated that Jawwad is survived by his wife and five children.

Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, the international spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), has confirmed Jawwad’s death but said the U.N. agency was not telling the full story about the incident.

Shoshani alleged that the U.N. worker was “hurling explosive devices that posed a threat to the forces operating in the area,” which led IDF troops to open fire to remove the threat.

“It should be noted that after receiving his details, it was found that the terrorist was known to Israeli security forces and he had been complicit in additional terrorist activities,” he stated on the social media site X.

The Epoch Times has reached out to UNRWA for comment on Shoshani’s claim.

Six other UNRWA workers were killed in Israeli airstrikes targeting a school-turned-shelter in Gaza on Sept. 11, the highest death toll among its staff in a single incident, according to the agency.

“Among those killed was the manager of the UNRWA shelter and other team members providing assistance to displaced people,” it stated, urging all parties to stop using schools or their surroundings for fighting purposes.

Shoshani stated on X that the IDF had asked UNRWA to provide details and names of the workers who died in the attack, but “no answers have been provided by UNRWA despite repeated requests.”

He said an IDF inquiry suggests that “a significant number of the names that have appeared in the media and on social networks are Hamas terrorist operatives who took part in terrorist activities” against Israeli citizens and troops.

UNRWA has long faced criticism from Israel and others, who accuse the group of coordinating with terrorist groups, as well as of using teaching materials in Palestinian schools that foster anti-Semitism and jihadism.

Last month, an internal U.N. investigation found that nine employees of one of its agencies may have been involved in Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, and those employees were fired.

Israel launched its military operation in Gaza after Hamas terrorists carried out its 2023 attack in which more than 1,100 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.

Tom Ozimek contributed to this report.