U.N. investigators cleared 10 employees of a Palestinian refugee agency in Gaza accused of taking part in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, but nine others were fired because of possible involvement, the United Nations said.

The investigators found evidence that the employees “may have been involved” in the attack, which set off the war in the Gaza Strip, the U.N. said. It said they had been fired “in the interests of the agency.”

The investigation’s conclusion appeared to bring to a close, for now at least, a controversy that began after Israel leveled the alarming accusations in January against the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA. The allegations led dozens of donor nations to suspend hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for the agency, threatening to hobble its aid operations in Gaza.

With 13,000 staff members in the embattled territory, UNRWA has been key to efforts to provide shelter, food and other basic services to Gazans during nine months of war that has displaced most of the territory’s 2.2 million people. Tens of thousands have been killed, according to Gaza’s health authorities.

In recent months, most donor nations have resumed funding for the agency, citing its critical role in delivering aid to desperate Gazans, as well as the results of a separate U.N. investigation into UNRWA’s adherence to U.N. neutrality rules that was released in April. But one of its biggest funders, the United States, has not done so. U.S. lawmakers in March blocked all donations for one year.

In a statement on Monday, the agency’s head, Philippe Lazzarini, acknowledged the investigators’ findings and said that the nine employees who were deemed to have possibly participated in the attack “cannot work for UNRWA.”