UNRWA says staffer killed in Israeli West Bank raid

JERUSALEM: The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said Friday one of its employees was killed this week during an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank, the first such death in more than a decade.

The agency, known as UNRWA, said the employee was “shot and killed on the roof of his home by a sniper”, and that it was “the first time an UNRWA staff member has been killed in the West Bank in more than 10 years”.

The incident took place in the Faraa refugee camp in the northern West Bank, the statement said.

It identified the slain employee as Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad, who “worked as a sanitation labourer” in the camp and “is survived by his wife and five children”.

An Israeli military statement earlier on Friday said troops had “conducted a 48-hour counter-terrorism operation” in the areas of Tubas, Tamun and Faraa, killing “five armed terrorists” in an air strike and a sixth in “exchanges of fire” with “a terrorist that hurled explosive devices”.

Israeli forces tie wounded Palestinian to jeep in West Bank raid

The military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the UNRWA statement about its staffer.

In late August, the military launched a large-scale operation in the north of the West Bank that has killed dozens and is ongoing.

On September 4, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said the military would use its “full strength” to strike Palestinian in the West Bank, and that he had ordered the military to carry out air strikes “wherever necessary” in order to “avoid endangering soldiers”.

The operation in the Faraa camp this week “comes as the West Bank is experiencing unprecedented levels of violence, placing communities at risk”, UNRWA said in its statement.

UNRWA has said at least 220 members of the agency’s staff have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

That includes six it said were killed in a strike Wednesday on a school-turned-shelter in central Gaza, the highest death toll among its team in a single incident.

UNRWA, which coordinates nearly all aid into Gaza, has been in crisis since Israel accused a dozen of its 30,000 employees of being involved in the October 7 attacks that sparked the war.

The UN immediately fired the implicated staff members, and a probe found some “neutrality related issues” but stressed Israel had not provided evidence for its main allegations.