Rare death of UN worker as Israel pursues West Bank operation

JERUSALEM - The UN agency for Palestinian refugees on Sept 13 said one of its employees was killed during an Israeli operation in the occupied West Bank, where raids have escalated since August.

Israel’s military called the UN worker a “terrorist” who posed a threat to troops.

The United Nations agency, UNRWA, said the employee was its first to be killed in the Palestinian territory in more than a decade.

But he is among dozens of Palestinians killed during the large-scale Israeli operation which began days ago and is ongoing, with several more Palestinians dead since Sept 11.

UNRWA identified the employee as Mr Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad, who worked as a sanitation labourer. It said he was “shot and killed on the roof of his home by a sniper” in Faraa refugee camp.

A military spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Nadav Shoshani, said on social media platform X that during an operation in Faraa, “a terrorist was identified hurling explosive devices that posed a threat” to forces, leading troops to open fire to remove the threat.

It was later “discovered he is also an UNRWA employee”, Lt-Col Shoshani said.

The employee’s death is in addition to those of six other UNRWA staffers the UN said were killed in the Gaza Strip on Sept 11 during a strike on a school-turned-shelter. It was the highest single incident toll for the agency, UNRWA said.

Mourners on Sept 13 carried Mr Jawwad’s body through the streets of Faraa, with his blue UN vest resting atop the Palestinian flag that covered him.

In nearby Tubas, funerals also took place for other Palestinians who were killed by an air strike.

A military statement on Sept 13 said Israeli forces had “conducted a 48-hour counter-terrorism operation” in the areas of Tubas, Tamun and Faraa – north-east of Nablus – in which an air strike killed “five armed terrorists”.

UNRWA has over 30,000 workers in the Palestinian territories and elsewhere. Israel has previously accused it of employing “more than 400 terrorists” in Gaza.

Violence in the West Bank had already soared alongside the nearly 12-month-old war in the Gaza Strip, but in late August, Israel began its large-scale raids.

Major Israeli operations in the West Bank are sometimes occurring “at a scale not witnessed in the last two decades”, the UN human rights chief said this week.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said the military withdrew from Tubas on the evening of Sept 12, allowing the funerals there to go ahead, after the air strike which the Palestinian Red Crescent said killed the men on Sept 11.

“I woke up in the morning to the sound of an explosion,” Mr Ahmed Sawafta, the father of one of the dead men, told AFP.

Mr Osaid Kharaz, who calls himself a Hamas activist, told AFP at the funeral in Tubas that Israel “is attempting to impose a new reality and undermine the popular support for the resistance (to Israeli occupation) in the West Bank”.

‘Full strength’

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant announced on Sept 4 that the military would use its “full strength” to strike Palestinian militants in the West Bank.

He said he had ordered the military to carry out air strikes “wherever necessary” in order to “avoid endangering soldiers”.

Days later, the European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell said Israel aimed “to turn the West Bank into a new Gaza”.

Israeli forces earlier this week also carried out operations around the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem.

The military on Sept 13 reported four deaths “in the areas of Tulkarem and Nur Shams”. It said “three of the terrorists were eliminated in an aerial strike on Wednesday”, while the fourth was killed “during close-quarters combat”.

The armed wing of Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad said that the strike killed three of its fighters.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and has ramped up deadly raids in the territory since Hamas’ Oct 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.

According to the Palestinian health ministry, at least 679 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by the Israeli military or settlers since Oct 7.

At least 24 Israelis, including security forces, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations in the territory during the same period, according to Israeli officials. AFP