Israel Defense Forces (IDF) followed a Hamas tunnel located after heavy fighting in Gaza and found themselves in a sophisticated command tunnel under the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) headquarters.
The space beneath UNRWA was identified as a Hamas command center, full of data servers, which Israel says will provide a treasure trove of terrorist information. The data servers were powered by the building above.
So Israel raided the offices of UNRWA and found them filled with Hamas weapons and explosives.
Israel took reporters on a tour of the facilities to show the synchrony of the two groups.
The IDF said,
The forces located electrical infrastructure inside the tunnel connected to UNRWA's main headquarters, under which the underground tunnel was located, indicating that UNRWA's facilities supplied the tunnel with electricity.
Large quantities of weapons were found inside the rooms of the building, including rifles, ammunition, grenades and explosives. Intelligence and documents discovered in the offices of UNRWA officials confirmed that the offices had in fact also been used by Hamas terrorists.
UNRWA denies any involvement with Hamas.
In a statement, UNRWA said it had not been officially informed of the tunnel by Israeli authorities and had vacated the headquarters on Oct. 12, five days after the war began. It was therefore 'unable to confirm or otherwise comment' on the Israeli finding.
'UNRWA ... does not have the military and security expertise nor the capacity to undertake military inspections of what is or might be under its premises,' the statement said.
'In the past, whenever [a] suspicious cavity was found close to or under UNRWA premises, protest letters were promptly filed to parties to the conflict, including both the de facto authorities in Gaza (Hamas) and the Israeli authorities.'
However, as this report speculates, it's difficult to imagine a scenario where Hamas could draw the power needed to run its command center or store its weapons in many of the U.N. offices without their knowledge.
It's also not the first time that United Nations personnel have been implicated in aiding Hamas militarily.
Israel has even shown that there were U.N. employees who participated in the October 7th attack.
The U.N. made a grand gesture of firing them without asking any questions or performing a preemptive investigation, which was very unlike the U.N. Given recent events, it may be that there was some fear for what an investigation might uncover.
To date, 16 countries have ceased funding the UNRWA, including the U.S., pending an investigation into UNRWA's role in October 7th.
It's unclear what this latest development will mean in terms of that investigation.
The evidence looks pretty damning for the UN though!
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