The Israeli forces have unearthed a Hamas military installation under the headquarters of the United Nations’s aid agency for Palestinians.
The compound under the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, headquarters in Gaza City appears to be an important communications and intelligence hub for the Islamist group, according to Israeli authorities.
UNRWA is the U.N. agency charged with managing humanitarian problems related to displaced Palestinians, with headquarters in Amman, Jordan, and in Gaza.
Israeli military officials have reportedly suspected the location of this complex for several years but haven’t used airstrikes to target it because it has been shielded by the U.N. presence.
The hub is part of a system of tunnels and subterranean chambers carved throughout the Gaza Strip, which include routes near or under some of the region’s largest hospitals and other civilian facilities.
Israeli officials, accompanied by Wall Street Journal reporters, found several rows of computer servers in the communications hub running from UNRWA electrical supplies.
Israeli officials assert that people working at UNRWA would have been aware of the tunnel complex either from suspicious activities during its construction or by a spike in electricity use when the hub commenced operations.
In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, UNRWA said that the report of Hamas tunnels under its Gaza location “merit an independent inquiry,” but the agency itself “does not have the military and security expertise nor the capacity” to conduct an investigation into “what is or might be under its premises.”
A spokesperson from UNRWA also said the agency is unaware of any electricity being stolen from its facilities and that Israel had not informed the agency of any Hamas complex under its office.
Last month, 12 staffers from UNRWA were fired from their positions after being accused of participating in the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. Details of their involvement in the attack, which killed roughly 1,200 people, are unclear.
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A total of 16 donor countries, including the United States, pulled funding from UNRWA following the discovery of the staffers’ respective involvements in Oct. 7.
“It’s difficult to imagine that Gazans will survive this crisis without UNRWA,” said UNRWA director of Affairs in Gaza, Thomas White, in a plea for donations to resume. White is also the U.N. deputy humanitarian coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
