The coffin of Shireen Abu Akleh is carried by the crowd outside St Joseph’s Hospital in East Jerusalem on Friday May 13, 2022. AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP
Thousands of Palestinians said goodbye in Jerusalem on Friday, May 13 to one of their star journalists, Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot in the head in the occupied West Bank amid ongoing violence while covering an Israeli military attack.
A flood of people attended his funeral in Jerusalem on Friday. When the journalist’s coffin was taken out of the hospital, violence broke out. Israeli troops broke into the compound of St. Joseph’s Institution in East Jerusalem, a Palestinian sector of the city occupied and annexed by the Jewish state.
Images broadcast by local television show the star reporter’s coffin nearly falling to the ground as Israeli police dispersed the crowd and waved Palestinian flags.
Wave of emotions in the world
“If you don’t stop these nationalist chants, we will have to disperse you by force and we will prevent the funeral from taking place,” an Israeli policeman shouted through a megaphone at the crowd, according to video released by the police. According to her, “hundreds of people” gathered at the hospital and stones were thrown at police, who “were forced to use any means to break up riots”.
“Brutal Israeli special forces attack Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral procession leaving Saint Joseph Hospital,” Hanane Achraoui, a historical figure with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), tweeted. “Israel’s inhumanity is on full display,” she also said.
Shireen Abu Akleh’s coffin was eventually transported to the Old City, where a mass was held in a crowded Greek Catholic church before being buried in a nearby cemetery. The alleyways of the Christian Quarter on its edge were packed with onlookers who had come to attend the funeral of the 51-year-old American-Palestinian reporter who grew up in East Jerusalem, a Palestinian part of the city that was occupied and annexed by Israel. The crowd followed the coffin to the cemetery.
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Violence in Jenin
The funeral of the Palestinian journalist icon comes as fresh clashes break out near and in the Jenin camp, a stronghold of armed Palestinian factions from where the perpetrators of deadly attacks in Israel have been perpetrated in recent months. In this Palestinian territory, occupied by Israel since 1967, the Israeli army has launched several operations to detain Palestinians it believes are wanted.
According to an official statement, an Israeli soldier was killed on Friday in an operation “against terrorists” in Burqin near Jenin. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, thirteen Palestinians were injured in the Jenin camp, two of them seriously from gunshots.
In the Jenin region of the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, clashes erupted during a new Israeli army operation; According to official sources, one Israeli soldier was killed while thirteen Palestinians were injured. The journalist from the pan-Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera was fatally injured in the Jenin refugee camp. She was wearing a bulletproof vest that said “Presse” and a reporter’s helmet.
The death of this reporter, an icon of Palestinian journalism, has unleashed a wave of excitement in the Palestinian territories, in the Arab world, where her reports have been followed for more than two decades, in Europe and in the United States.
Shireen Abu Akleh, a 51-year-old Christian Palestinian who also has US citizenship, was shot in the head while covering an Israeli operation in the Jenin Palestinian refugee camp in the northern West Bank.
After saying it “probably” succumbed to Palestinian fire, Israel said it did not rule out the bullet could have been fired by its soldiers. The Palestinian Authority, Al-Jazeera and the government of Qatar accused the Israeli army of killing them.
Also read: The Death of a Journalist and the Demand for Truth