(Bloomberg) -- The United Nations said one of its workers was killed in the West Bank during an Israeli raid Thursday, marking the first such killing of a UN employee in the Palestinian territory in more than a decade as tensions escalate.
The victim was a Palestinian sanitation worker for the UN Relief and Works Agency, known as UNRWA. He was killed on the roof of his home in the Israeli-occupied West Bank by a sniper during an overnight military operation, the agency said in a statement Friday.
More than 200 UNRWA workers have died in Gaza since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel set off the war there. The organization, which provides basic services to some 2 million Palestinians across the Middle East and has been the main conduit for aid in Gaza, has been clashing with Israel over its operations.
Israeli officials contend that thousands of UNRWA workers have ties to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a claim the UN says they have yet to back up with evidence. For their part, UN officials have accused Israel of a series of violations, including the deliberate arrest of staff and shootings at UN convoys.
Israel Defense Forces spokesman Nadav Shoshani said on X that the man killed this week was shot at while he was “hurling explosive devices that posed a threat to the forces operating in the area.”
The West Bank has seen a significant rise in violence since the start of the conflict in Gaza, with the war between Hamas and Israel leading to spillover to the largest Palestinian territory. More than 650 Palestinians have been killed since October in the West Bank amid intensified military operations and settler violence, according to local authorities.
Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by the US and European Union, triggered the war in Gaza when its fighters invaded southern Israel last October, killing 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostage. Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed about 41,000 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.
--With assistance from Jason Kao and Fadwa Hodali.
(Updates with IDF spokesman’s comment in fifth paragraph.)
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