WASHINGTON — The US is “expanding” its damning probe of a controversial UN relief agency to try to root out more potential members linked to Hamas and the Oct. 7, 2023, terror slaughter in Israel, The Post has learned.

The Office of the Inspector General is continuing to uncover ties to terrorism at the controversial United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, according to a US official.

“USAID is investigating over 100 UNRWA officials for both ties to Hamas and participation in the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks,” said a US diplomat familiar with USAID IG’s ongoing investigation.

“The list is expanding.”

So far, that investigation has identified 14 UNRWA employees affiliated with Hamas and referred them to the State Department “for consideration of suspension and/or debarment action,” the Office of the Inspector General for the now-defunct US Agency for International Development has said.

Two other workers have also been referred for debarment, meaning they can no longer receive US funding for the next 10 years.

One former employee of the embattled Palestinian relief agency who worked as a school principal in Gaza has already been blacklisted from receiving federal funds.

One person IDed in the probe is Hafez Mousa Mohammed Mousa, who served as a UNRWA school official. But the investigation found he was also an operative in Hamas’ East Jabaliya Battalion who helped with coordinating communications during the Oct. 7 massacre of roughly 1,200 — at least 46 of whom were American citizens.

A separate UN-led investigation into UNRWA staff found just nine people had potential involvement in the carnage, and the relief agency’s commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini fired them.

USAID Deputy Inspector General Adam Kaplan shared some of the office’s prior published findings on UNRWA — as well as others from 149 active investigations with members of the House Foreign Affairs Oversight and Intelligence Subcommittee on Tuesday.

“Of all award recipients, the least transparent is the United Nations,” Kaplan said, adding that USAID OIG was currently investigating five subagencies at the UN with their response times ranging from two months to as much as two years.

The deputy inspector general also noted that it’s more difficult to apply penalties to the UN, compared with USAID contractors who can face criminal charges for violations.

President Trump issued an executive order in February 2025 halting all US funding to UNRWA — which still received more than $839 million in funding through the United Nations in 2025.

“UNRWA’s terrorist ties are undeniable and President Trump was right to defund it–but the UN failed to act,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch said in a March 3 statement.

“I am glad to see President Trump’s USAID Office of the Inspector General conduct its own investigations to ensure bad actors like UNRWA don’t get taxpayer dollars.”

The office has also focused on foreign aid audits, uncovering of bribery and other illicit schemes totaling hundreds of millions of dollars — after the Elon Musk-led closure of USAID itself one year ago due to fraud concerns.

Kaplan made the case to the subcommittee that the watchdog government agency is still needed even after USAID is shut down — and brought receipts of the alleged fraud, waste and abuse his office has uncovered.

“Nobody has a track record like the USAID IG in fighting fraud and corruption in foreign assistance,” he said in his opening remarks. “As the only IG dedicated to solely to overseeing foreign assistance programs run by multiple agencies, we know the people, places and schemes that put taxpayer dollars at risk.”

But there remain issues with recipients’ transparency — and the IG having to largely rely on them being willing to “self-disclose fraud allegations,” he added.

“We’ve uncovered roads that were reported as complete but were never built,” he explained. “We’ve found edible grain meant for starving kids being replaced with animal feed; in distribution sites, where food reported as delivered never arrived.”

Three months after USAID’s closure, three business owners and a USAID contracting officer pleaded guilty to bilking taxpayers out of $550 million over a 10-year period following an IG investigation.

Another IG inquiry led to the indictment of two foreign nationals for allegedly conspiring to divert $650 million in taxpayer-funded HIV/AIDS care and treatment from a Kenyan government-run corporation.

That helped preserve $32 million in funding for non-fraudulent aid, Kaplan says in testimony.

Additionally, the IG office helped bust 19 people in December participating in a visa fraud ring spanning Central and South America that defrauded victims out of more than $2.5 million.

USAID OIG auditors also discovered in a report issued earlier this month that more than $26 billion sent to shore up the Ukraine government’s budget amid its war with Russia was, in fact, being received by individuals “living abroad,” in addition to issues with “duplicate payments.”

Reporting on the Ukraine-based funding also failed to arrive “on time or at all,” Kaplan told lawmakers.

The testimony comes as federal agencies have been meeting with lawmakers to discuss annual appropriations. Last year, USAID OIG received more than $62.5 million that had initially been slated solely for the State Department Office of Inspector General.

The office was not included on a new organization chart put out by the State Department after it closed USAID, yet it has continued to pursue investigations — even as lawmakers field proposals to similarly shut it down.

A May 2025 legislative proposal — which was distributed to members of Congress again in February — still suggests the abolition of USAID OIG and the assumption of all its tasks by the State Department’s inspector general.

The proposal was followed by a meeting between members of the State IG’s office and lawmakers, during which the legislative approach was rejected, said one source familiar with the sit down.

Reps for the State Department Office of Inspector General did not immediately respond to a request for comment.