The White House’s National Security Council was told about the allegations that twelve U.N. Relief and Works Agency staffers were involved in the October 7 terrorist attack on Wednesday night, and it immediately froze U.S. funding for the group at that time, a spokesperson for the NSC told me today.

“Upon becoming aware of the allegations, the United States immediately paused additional funding for UNRWA while we review these allegations, worked to confirm that the individuals named were UNRWA employees, and asked Israel to share more information with us. We reached out to United Nations to urge them to take immediate actions to investigate these alarming allegations, which they announced this morning,” the spokesperson said.

UNRWA announced publicly this morning that it had terminated several employees whom Israel had said were involved in the October 7 attack and said it had launched an investigation into the situation. The State Department said this morning that Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with U.N. secretary-general António Guterres on Thursday to urge that the U.N. investigate.

The Israeli government has publicly questioned the timeline behind UNRWA’s Friday morning announcement. An Israeli government spokesman, Eylon Levy, suggested today in a social-media post that the UNRWA announcement was timed so that the story would get buried under news about the International Court of Justice’s ruling on the case that South Africa had brought against Israel.