Hamas’s leader in Lebanon, killed in an Israeli airstrike on Monday, was working undercover as a teacher for the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
Fateh Sharif was killed with his wife and two children in an Israeli strike on his home in a Palestinian refugee camp in the southern city of Tyre, the movement said.
Israeli military officials said Sharif was responsible for coordinating relations between Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Mr Sharif was suspended without pay by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, in March as it investigated what it described as activities “that are in violation of the agency’s regulatory framework governing staff conduct”.
The killing of Mr Sharif came as Israel attacked central Beirut for the first time, hitting the predominantly Sunni Muslim district of Cola in a targeted strike that killed three leaders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
The PFLP, a secular Communist outfit designated as a terrorist group by Britain and other Western countries, carried out a series of prominent aircraft hijackings in the 1970s, one of which resulted in Israel’s Entebbe Raid in Uganda in 1976.
Hamas said earlier on Monday that Mr Sharif was killed in an air strike on his home in the Al-Bass camp in southern Lebanon.
Wife and children killed
The group said he was killed with his wife, son and daughter in a “terrorist and criminal assassination”.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported an air strike on Al-Bass near the city of Tyre, saying it was the “first time” the camp had been targeted.
UNRWA told The Times of Israel on Monday that Sharif remained on unpaid administrative leave since the investigation into his political activities had been continuing.
Sharif’s suspension led to angry protests outside UNRWA’s offices in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, with demonstrators demanding that it be rescinded.
Scrutiny on UNRWA
The revelation that Sharif was an UNRWA employee will renew international scrutiny on the agency, which provides humanitarian and development support to 5.6m Palestinian refugees.
Israel accused 12 UNRWA employees in Gaza of taking part in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7 that killed 1,200 people, allegations that prompted more than a dozen donors, including Britain, to withhold funding.
Following an investigation, UNRWA fired nine of its staff members in August after finding that they “may have been” involved in the massacre. Britain and the other donors, with the solitary exception of the United States, have since renewed funding.
UNWRA has 32,000 employees across its field of operations, most of them Palestinian. The organisation has acknowledged that some staffers may be affiliated to armed groups and has said that it is re-examining safeguards protecting its neutrality and independence.
More than 200 UNRWA employees have been killed in Gaza since Israel’s military campaign began last year, the organisation says.