A UNITED Nations envoy admitted yesterday that he believed that members of Hamas were on the UN payroll in the Palestinian territories, but he rejected Israeli assertions that fighters in Gaza had been videotaped loading a rocket into a UN vehicle.

Israel has called on the UN to investigate after releasing footage taken by a drone flying over the Jabaliya refugee camp during the current operation to establish a buffer zone against missiles fired from the northern Gaza Strip.

The UN said in a statement that the “object visible on the tape is a folded stretcher. It appears to be the wrong length and much too light” to be a missile.

However, Peter Hansen, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which provides aid to Palestinian refugees, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation he had little doubt that the UN employed members of the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

“Oh, I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don’t see that as a crime,” he said. “Hamas as a political organisation does not mean that every member is a militant and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another.

“We demand of our staff, whatever their political persuasion is, that they behave in accordance with UN standards and norms for neutrality.”

The Palestinians asked the UN Security Council yesterday to halt the Israeli incursion, which began last week in reaction to the death of two children, aged 2 and 4, in a rocket attack on the southern Israeli town of Sederot.

A draft resolution circulated to Security Council members demanded “the immediate cessation of all military operations in the area of northern Gaza and the withdrawal of the Israeli occupying forces from that area”. It also called on Israel to “ensure the unfettered access and safety of UN personnel and all medical and humanitarian aid workers to provide emergency assistance to the civilian population”.

Diplomats predicted that the United States would use its veto power to kill the resolution in the 15-nation Security Council, and that the debate would then move to the 191-nation General Assembly this week.

Palestinian militants fired more Qassam rockets across the border into Sederot yesterday, defying Israeli forces on the sixth day of the incursion. Eight Palestinians were reported killed, including a four-year-old boy in Khan Younis, killed by a stray Israeli bullet, bringing the death toll to 63 in the bloodiest fighting in four years of conflict.

Israeli helicopters fired missiles into the crowded Jabaliya refugee camp, killing four militants, including a senior Hamas commander.

Palestinian sources maintain that at least 38 of those killed were civilians, but during a visit to Sederot yesterday Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Defence Minister, said that only militants were being targeted in the open-ended incursion.

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