Top Hamas commander killed in Lebanon was UNRWA employee placed on administrative leave

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Top Hamas commander killed in Lebanon was UNRWA employee placed on administrative leave

2024-10-01 01:34 Last Updated At：01:40

GENEVA (AP) — The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said that the top Hamas commander killed in Lebanon Monday was one of its employees but had no function as he was placed on administrative leave since March.

Fatah Sharif's connection to Hamas appeared set to ratchet up pressure on UNRWA, already facing a $80 million funding shortfall this year. Critics have repeatedly blasted the agency, saying it wasn’t doing enough to root out Hamas militants from its ranks.

The U.N.’s internal watchdog has been investigating UNRWA since Israel in January accused 12 of its staffers of being involved in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, in which armed militants killed 1,200 people and abducted some 250 others. The allegations led more than a dozen donor countries to suspend their funding, causing an initial cash crunch of about $450 million dollars. Since then, all donor countries except for the United States have decided to resume funding the agency.

Hamas said Sharif was killed with his wife, son and daughter in an airstrike on Al-Buss refugee camp, one of 12 dedicated to Palestinian refugees in the country, in the southern port city of Tyre. The Israeli military confirmed it had targeted him.

Sharif was not open about his affiliation with the group and its armed wing.

Israel has previously alleged the UNRWA has been infiltrated by the Palestinian militant group.

Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva posted on X saying that Hamas announced Sharif's death, "And guess what was the second job of Mr Sharif? He was a principal, head of @UNRWA teachers association in Lebanon.”

The mission added: “This case proves that there is a deep problem in @UNRWA, the way they do due diligence about who they are hiring.”

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said he learned in March of allegations that Sharif had been a “member of the political party of Hamas” and decided to suspend him and launch an investigation “from day one.”

Lazzarini said he hadn't heard Sharif might be a Hamas “commander" until Monday.

“So he was suspended, had no function, was not paid and was under investigation," Lazzarini told reporters in Geneva. "We are still an agency with due process — I mean, respecting due process and the principle of rule of law. So the investigation was ongoing.”

Lazzarini said he had received a letter from Israeli authorities listing the names of some 100 people allegedly linked to Hamas, and he took it “very seriously.” But he said Israeli authorities never responded to UNRWA requests for more information so that it might launch investigations into those cases.

“A list is not proof of anything,” he said.

A Hamas statement praised Sharif for his “educational and jihadist work” and called him “a successful teacher and an outstanding principal” for generations of Palestinian refugees.

The UNRWA teachers’ union and other Palestinian groups had periodically staged protests in front of the U.N. agency's office in Beirut since Sharif’s suspension, alleging it targeted him for his political stances. Earlier this month, the union staged a sit-in during a visit to Lebanon by Lazzarini, saying it awaited “positive and fair outcomes” in the case of his suspension.

Israel has been sharply critical of UNRWA and Lazzarini's leadership of it.

In July, David Mencer, a spokesman in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, called the longtime Swiss diplomat "one of the bad guys, a terrorist sympathizer, a Jew-killing enabler, a liar.”

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric responded by saying the comments were “reprehensible” and threatening.

UNRWA has 32,000 staff in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Palestinian territories, including 13,000 in Gaza who provide education, health care, food and other services to several million Palestinians and their families.

Its facilities in Gaza, where thousands of Palestinians have sought shelter, have been repeatedly attacked. Lazzarini said 223 UNRWA staffers have been killed in Gaza during the war, a toll that the United Nations says is the highest ever in a single conflict for employees of the world body.

The Israeli offensive in Gaza has killed 41,615, according to the Gaza Health Ministry which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Associated Press Writer Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.

Israel launches small raids against Hezbollah across the Lebanese border, official says

2024-10-01 01:22 Last Updated At：01:30

BEIRUT (AP) — Israel launched small ground raids against Hezbollah as it prepares for a larger ground operation in Lebanon, officials said Monday.

A U.S. official said Israel has informed the U.S about the raids that are underway and that Israel has not provided timing on plans for a larger operation. The U.S. has not told Israel to halt all of its operations in Lebanon and wouldn’t do so as Washington supports Israel’s right to defend itself, according to the official.

A Western official, a diplomat in Cairo whose country is directly involved in de-escalation efforts, said an Israeli ground operation in Lebanon is “imminent.” The diplomat said Israel has shared its plans with the United States and other Western allies and that the operation will “be limited.”

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation. It was not clear if Israel had made a final decision on a broader operation. The Israeli military did not comment.

Hezbollah vowed Monday it was ready to keep fighting even after much of its top command, including longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, was recently wiped out.

Israeli strikes have killed Nasrallah and six of his top commanders and officials in the last 10 days, and have hit what the military says are thousands of militant targets across large parts of Lebanon. Over 1,000 people have been killed in the country in the past two weeks, nearly a quarter of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry.

Early Monday, an airstrike hit a residential building in central Beirut, wiping out one apartment, damaging others, and killing three Palestinian militants, as Israel appeared to send a clear message that no part of Lebanon is out of bounds.

Despite the heavy blow Hezbollah has suffered in recent weeks, acting leader Naim Kassem said in a televised statement that if Israel decides to launch a ground offensive, the group's fighters are ready. He said the commanders killed have already been replaced.

“Israel was not able to affect our (military) capabilities,” Kassem said in a televised statement, the first time any senior Hezbollah figure has been seen since Nasrallah was killed. “There are deputy commanders and there are replacements in case a commander is wounded in any post.”

He added that Hezbollah, which fought Israel to a stalemate in their monthlong war in 2006, anticipated “the battle could be long.”

A founding member of the militant group who had been Nasrallah’s longtime deputy, Kassem will remain in his acting position until the group’s leadership elects a replacement. The man widely expected to take over the top post is Hashem Safieddine, a cousin of Nasrallah who oversees Hezbollah’s political affairs.

Hezbollah has significantly increased its rocket attacks in the past week to several hundred daily, but most have been intercepted or fallen in open areas. Several people have been wounded in Israel. There have been no fatalities since two soldiers were killed near the border on Sept. 19.

But Hezbollah’s capabilities remain unclear.

As recently as two weeks ago, a strike like Monday's in central Beirut — outside of the main areas where Hezbollah operates and next to a busy transportation hub normally crowded with buses and taxis — would have been seen as a major escalation and likely followed by a long-range Hezbollah strike into Israel.

But the unspoken rules of the long-running conflict no longer seem to be in effect.

It's possible that Hezbollah is holding back to save resources for a bigger battle, including a threatened Israeli ground invasion. But the militant group might also be in disarray after Israeli intelligence apparently penetrated its highest levels.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, meeting with Israeli troops on Monday, said Israel would “use all the capabilities we have,” hinting at a ground operation. “You are part of this effort,” he added.

Some European countries began pulling their diplomats and citizens out of Lebanon on Monday. Germany, which has been calling on its citizens to leave Lebanon since October 2023, sent a military plane to evacuate diplomats’ relatives and others. Bulgaria sent a government jet to get the first group of its citizens out, with priority being given to families with children and vulnerable groups.

In the past week, Israel has frequently targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has a strong presence, including the massive strike on Friday that killed Nasrallah. But it had not hit locations closer to the city center.

The strike early Monday killed three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a small, leftist faction that has not been meaningfully involved in months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel has not claimed the strike but is widely assumed to have carried it out.

Also Monday, Hamas announced that its top commander in Lebanon, Fatah Sharif, was killed with his family in an airstrike on the Al-Buss refugee camp in the southern port city of Tyre. The Israeli military confirmed that it had targeted him.

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said Sharif was an employee, and was put on administrative leave without pay in March as it investigated allegations about his political activities. Israel has accused the agency, known as UNRWA, of links to Palestinian militant groups, while the agency says it is committed to neutrality and works to prevent any such infiltration.

Hezbollah began firing rockets, drones and missiles into northern Israel after Hamas' Oct. 7 attack from Gaza into Israel sparked the war in the Palestinian territory. Hezbollah and Hamas are allies and both supported by Iran, and Hezbollah said it would continue the attacks in solidarity with the Palestinians until there was a cease-fire in Gaza.

Israel responded to the rockets with airstrikes in Lebanon, and the fighting has steadily escalated over the past year. The Lebanese government says the fighting may have displaced up to a million people, although the U.N. estimate is around 200,000.

Tens of thousands of Israelis have also been displaced. Israel has vowed to keep fighting until the attacks stop and its citizens can return to their homes.

The United States and its allies have called for a cease-fire, hoping to avoid further escalation that could draw in Iran and set off a wider war. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shown little interest, as his country racks up military achievements against a longtime foe.

France, which has close ties to Lebanon, has joined the United States in calling for a cease-fire. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, speaking during a visit to Beirut Monday, urged Israel to refrain from a ground offensive.

Barrot also called on Hezbollah to stop firing on Israel, saying the group “bears heavy responsibility in the current situation, given its choice to enter the conflict.”

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, speaking after meeting with Barrot, said the country is committed to an immediate cease-fire followed by the deployment of Lebanese troops in the south, in keeping with a U.N. Security Council resolution that ended the 2006 war but was never fully implemented.

Hezbollah, which boasts tens of thousands of battle-hardened fighters and long-range missiles capable of hitting anywhere inside Israel, has long been seen as the most powerful militant group in the region and a key partner to Iran in both threatening and deterring Israel.

But Hezbollah has never faced an onslaught quite like this one, which began with a sophisticated attack on its pagers and walkie-talkies in mid-September that killed dozens of people and wounded around 3,000 — including many fighters but also many civilians.

This story has been updated to correct that Monday’s strike in central Beirut hit an apartment building, but it did not level it.

Melzer reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue and Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut, and Jamey Keaten in Geneva, Geir Moulson in Berlin and Veselin Toshkov in Sofia, Bulgaria, contributed reporting.

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war