UNRWA confirms terrorist killed by IDF who led Re’im shelter massacre was a staffer

"UNRWA on Thursday confirmed that one of its staffers was killed by an Israeli strike in Gaza a day earlier, after Israel named him as a Hamas Nukbha force commander.

The IDF and Shin Bet said that Muhammad Abu Attawi, who led the killing and kidnapping of Israelis from a roadside bomb shelter near Kibbutz Re’im on October 7 last year, had been employed by UNRWA since July 2022 while serving as a Nukbha commander in Hamas’s Bureij Battalion.

According to UNRWA, Attawi’s name was included in a letter the Palestinian refugee agency received from Israel in July that included a list of 100 staff members who were also allegedly members of terror groups, including Hamas...

During the October 7 onslaught that started the ongoing war in Gaza, Attawi commanded the attack on a bomb shelter near Re’im where partygoers from the Nova festival had fled.

The shelter was one of several that became infamous in the aftermath of the attack, having become deathtraps for many Israelis who huddled there amid the onslaught.

Nearly 30 were in the Re’im shelter when Hamas terrorists stormed it, hurling in grenades and firing on those inside. Sixteen were murdered, four were kidnapped — including Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was executed many months later in Gaza — and seven survived.

Attawi was also involved in attacks on troops during the war in Gaza, the IDF said.

'Israel has requested urgent clarifications from senior UN officials and an urgent investigation into the involvement of UNRWA employees in the October 7 massacre,' IDF Spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Thursday.

Israel has long accused the agency of employing members of Hamas and other terror groups, allowing them to steep future generations in virulent anti-Israel ideology...Israel has also accused multiple agency staffers of taking part in the Hamas-led attack on October 7, in which some 1,200 people in Israel were killed and 251 taken hostage...

During its operations in Gaza, the IDF found a Hamas data center located directly beneath UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City, in addition to numerous findings indicating the use of the agency’s assets for terror purposes.

The UN acknowledged in August that nine UNRWA staff may have been involved in the Hamas October attacks and fired them..."