"A senior Hamas official on Thursday pledged the terror group's support for employees of the UN agency for Palestinians, who have seized partial control of the agency's Gaza headquarters in order to protest sweeping pay cuts and dismissals blamed on US funding cuts.
The director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza accused the workers union of staging a 'mutiny' over the job cuts, and admitted UNRWA does not have full control over its offices in Gaza City.
'I am the captain of the ship which has 13,000 sailors on it and they have basically thrown me off the bridge and consigned me to my captain's quarters,' Matthias Schmale told AFP, referring to the number of employees in Gaza...
On Wednesday, the protest inside the UNRWA compound was visited by Mahmoud Zahar, a senior Hamas member who pledged the group's full support for protesters, an AFP correspondent said.
Schmale was unaware that Zahar had been inside the compound, saying any visit by a figure from Hamas - considered a terrorist organization by the US and European Union - was forbidden as it breaches the UN's impartiality rules..."