IDF: UNRWA staffer killed in West Bank raid was hurling explosives at troops
Army accuses Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad of being a known terror operative in the Fara’a camp, after the UN agency says he was ‘shot and killed on the roof of his home by a sniper’
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said Friday that one of its employees was killed this week during an Israeli raid in the West Bank.
UNRWA identified the slain employee as Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad, who “worked as a sanitation laborer” in the northern West Bank’s Fara’a camp and “is survived by his wife and five children.”
According to UNRWA, he 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 Israel Defense Forces later said Jawwad was throwing explosives at troops in the camp and was a known terror operative, issuing an English language statement accusing the agency of “not telling the full story.”
IDF spokesperson Nadav Shoshani said that during an operation in Fara’a, a suspect was identified hurling explosive devices that posed a threat to the forces operating in the area. IDF troops opened fire toward him to remove said threat, and he was killed.
“The terrorist was subsequently identified and it was discovered he is also an UNRWA employee named Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad. 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,” Shoshani said.
“This is yet another example of an UNRWA employee taking active part in terrorist activities against Israel, as has been proven in several other cases in the past, including employees who participated in the October 7 massacre,” he said.
In an earlier statement, the IDF said troops “conducted a 48-hour counter-terrorism operation” in the areas of Tubas, Tamun and Fara’a, killing “five armed terrorists” in an airstrike and a sixth in “exchanges of fire” with “a terrorist that hurled explosive devices.”
Mourners on Friday carried Jawwad’s body through the streets of Fara’a, with his blue UN vest resting atop the Palestinian flag that covered him. Funerals for Palestinians killed in the airstrike were held in nearby Tubas, with images showing gunmen among those in attendance — including one wearing a Palestinian Islamic Jihad headband.
The incident came days after UNRWA said six of its staffers were killed in an Israeli strike targeting a Hamas control center at a school-turned-shelter in central Gaza’s Nuseirat, with the IDF later saying three of them were members of the terror group.
The UN denounced Israel over the strike, saying the school had been “deconflicted” and calling it the highest death toll among its team in a single incident.
The IDF said Hamas was using the school to plan and carry out attacks against troops and Israel, and that it carried out “many steps” to mitigate harm to civilians in the strike. The military also said that it identified nine of the 18 people reported killed in the strike as Hamas operatives, including the three UNRWA staffers.
UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini said after the school strike that at least 220 members of the agency’s staff have been killed in Gaza throughout the war sparked by the Hamas-led October 7 massacres. Israel says Gaza terror groups regularly and systematically operate from within such sites, using civilians as human shields with the express purpose of increasing civilian casualties during the war.
UNRWA, which coordinates nearly all aid into Gaza, has been in crisis since Israel accused dozens of its employees of being involved in the October 7 attack.
In January, UNRWA said it had fired an unspecified number of staffers, after Israeli authorities provided information that pointed to their active participation in the onslaught.
Earlier this month, the UN announced that nine UNRWA employees “may have been involved” in Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and will be fired from the organization.
The accusations by Israel led numerous countries to suspend their funding to the organization, but many have since renewed it, citing the difficult humanitarian situation in the Strip.
