Keep supporting UN Palestinian refugee agency, Saudi urges

Saudi Arabia said Monday donors should continue supporting the main UN aid agency for Palestinians after Israel alleged several of its staff took part in the October 7 Hamas attack.

Supporters of UNRWA should "carry out their role in supporting the humanitarian tasks toward Palestinian refugees", the foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

This would "alleviate the effects of the humanitarian crisis in the occupied Palestinian territories", SPA said.

Several major donors, including the United States, France, Britain, Germany and Japan, froze their funding for UNRWA in response to Israel's allegations.

Israel has also vowed to stop the agency's work in Gaza after the war.

The Saudi statement said "review and investigation procedures" related to Israel's allegations should yield "facts coupled with evidence".

It also highlighted "the human sacrifices made by UNRWA workers", including deaths and injuries, "due to the indiscriminate Israeli shelling of relief centres in (the) Gaza Strip".

The October 7 attack by Hamas militants resulted in about 1,140 deaths, mostly civilians, in southern Israel and the seizing of 250 hostages, according to an AFP tally of official figures.

In response, Israel's relentless military offensive has since killed at least 26,637 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas government's health ministry in the territory.

Saudi Arabia has never officially recognised Israel but was in discussions to normalise relations before the attack as part of three-way negotiations involving the United States, which has backed Israel during the war.

The outbreak of war forced a pause in those negotiations, and Saudi officials have since said no such deal is possible without a ceasefire in Gaza and an agreement on an "irrevocable" pathway towards the creation of a Palestinian state.

A statement issued by the UN in 2022 said Saudi Arabia had been "one of the largest donors to UNRWA", contributing nearly one billion dollars in the previous decade.

The Gulf kingdom allocated an additional $2 million to the agency just over a week after the Hamas attack.