Over the weekend, the Times of Israel reported that vast tunnels and a data hub were found under the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) discovered the tunnels which are linked to Hamas and Islamic terrorism based in Gaza.
In the network of Hamas logistics tunnels was a data hub, featuring electrical rooms, computer servers and living spaces. UNRWA Gaza head of operations Philippe Lazzarini claimed on Saturday he “did not know” that Hamas was operating and conducting logistics underground beneath the agency’s headquarters, according to the Times. “We have not used that compound since we left it [on Oct. 12] nor are we aware of any activity that may have taken place there,” Lazzarini said in a statement on Saturday.
UNRWA has been front and center in the news for its ties to terror groups. Former President Donald Trump had frozen funding, only to be undone by the Biden Administration. Multiple sources of funding were cut after it was discovered that UNRWA employed several staffers who participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks against Israel.
Additionally, it has come to light that many more staffers had ties to Islamic terrorism in the region and that teachers of UNRWA have been involved in propaganda teaching young children to hate and want to slaughter Jews.
The Daily Caller News Foundation notes UNRWA fired multiple staffers in late January for their alleged participation in the Hamas Oct. 7 attacks against Israel. It was later discovered that over 1,000 UNRWA staffers had direct ties to Islamic terrorism, according to U.S. intelligence reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Multiple Western nations, including the U.S., have suspended funding for UNRWA pending an investigation into the organization’s ties to terrorism.
The IDF says it had little or no previous knowledge about the Hamas tunnels existing under UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters, according to the Times. The logistics and data hub under UNRWA’s headquarters was discovered by Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service as a result of interrogations of captured Hamas terrorists.
“The IDF was here previously, the first time was to destroy the enemy, but when we were here the last time we collected a lot of intelligence documents and findings, a lot of prisoners, and thanks to this we reached here,” IDF Col. Benny Aharon told the Times. “Now we carried out a targeted operation to take this capability away.”
“We had a basis of information, but not enough to be able to dig down 20 meters and find it, we needed a bit more,” Aharon told the Times. “There’s information we get from prisoners we capture, from computers we find, from documents, maps.”