Israeli soldiers found missiles and military gear hidden among United Nations relief supplies in the northern Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces announced Saturday.
The IDF said 110 rockets, including 30 long-range Grad rockets, were found hidden among boxes belonging to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which supports Palestinian Authority refugees.
Russian-made Grad rockets have a range of 20-40 kilometers (12 to 26 miles).
The rockets were found inside a home in what the IDF called a “densely populated area” of northern Gaza.
The IDF has discovered rockets being stored in UNRWA schools and clinics during past conflicts as well.
In October, UNRWA reported that fuel and humanitarian aid was stolen from one its compounds by trucks allegedly from the Hamas-run Ministry of Health.
The discovery of the rockets raised further questions about the UNRWA.
On Wednesday (Nov. 29), one of the released hostages told Israeli journalist Almog Boker that he was held captive in the home of an UNRWA teacher. The hostage said the teacher locked him away in the attic and barely fed or cared for his medical treatment.
The UNRWA denied the accusation and demanded that Almog provide further proof.
Almog responded on X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday, saying that revealing the identity of the hostage would endanger the other captives.
“One of them testified he was held hostage and starved by an @UNRWA teacher. That’s not an ‘allegation’. That’s a survivor testimony, and more testimonies are coming,” Almog tweeted.
“While Hamas holds 136 Israeli hostages in Gaza, I can’t share information that could endanger them or identify the survivor. I hope UNRWA treats this more seriously than Hamas’s theft from its stocks and abuse of its civilian facilities for terror activity.”
In November, the UK-based Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) issued a report detailing how at least 14 UNRWA teachers celebrated the Oct. 7 massacre of Israelis by Hamas terrorists on social media. The report included links and screenshots.
The document noted that the UNRWA curriculum also helped fuel the massacre, saying that IMPACT-se was able to identify at least 118 participants in the Oct. 7 attack as former students of UNRWA schools.
The US State Department allocated more than $220 million for UNRWA in June despite documentation that its school curriculum glorifies violence and terrorism and agreement that conditions funding on the prevention of teaching hate and antisemitism.
