Thousands of Palestinians in Jerusalem on Friday said goodbye to one of their star journalists, Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot in the head in the occupied West Bank, where she was covering an Israeli military attack amid ongoing violence.
• Also read: Palestinians pay tribute to star journalist Shireen Abu Akleh
• Also read: Al Jazeera journalist shot dead by Israeli army
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 13 Palestinians were injured.
In Jenin refugee camp, TV reporter Shireen Abu Akleh of Al Jazeera, Qatar, was fatally shot in the head while covering another Israeli raid. She was wearing a bulletproof vest that said “Presse” and a reporter’s helmet.
After saying the journalist was “probably” killed by Palestinian fire, Israel claimed it did not rule out the possibility that the bullet had been fired by its soldiers. The Palestinian Authority, Al Jazeera and the Qatar government have accused the Israeli army of killing them.
A flood of people attended his funeral in Jerusalem on Friday.
As the journalist’s coffin was released from the hospital, violence erupted and Israeli police dispersed a crowd waving Palestinian flags. Images broadcast by local television show the coffin did not fall.
He was eventually transported to the Old City, where mass was held in a crowded Greek Catholic church.
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.
Violence in Jenin
The funeral of the Palestinian journalism icon came as fresh clashes erupted near and in the Jenin camp, a stronghold of armed Palestinian factions from which the perpetrators of recent months’ deadly attacks in Israel originated.
The Israeli army has launched several operations there to arrest wanted Palestinians.
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, 13 Palestinians were injured in the Jenin camp, two of them seriously from gunshots.
The death of Shireen Abu Akleh has sparked a wave of excitement in the Palestinian Territories, in the Arab world where his accounts have been followed for more than two decades, in Europe and in the United States. There have been several calls for a “transparent” investigation.
The Israeli army stated that, based on the preliminary results of its investigation, it is not immediately possible to establish the origin of the shooting that killed the journalist. The shooting, they say, could be of Palestinian origin as well as Israeli origin.
Israeli authorities are demanding that the bullet be handed over to them to conduct a ballistics survey. They suggested that Palestinian and American experts be present during the review.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas nevertheless said on Thursday that he rejected a joint investigation with Israel. “The Israeli authorities committed this crime and we do not trust them.”
An initial autopsy was performed in the West Bank shortly after his death, but results were not published.
“Adoption”
Al Jazeera accused Israeli forces of “deliberately” killing their star journalist.
Thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank paid their respects on Thursday.
The portrait of the journalist, the seventh dead person in the Palestinian Territories since 2018 according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), was panned at rallies in Turkey, Sudan and Lebanon and projected onto a building in Doha, the capital of Qatar. .
Several demonstrations have also spontaneously erupted in the Palestinian Territories to protest his death.
In the Gaza Strip, artists carved his name in the sand and painted a mural in his honor, while children laid flowers at the site of his death in Jenin.
Atop a building in the central square of Ramallah, West Bank, the giant billboard now sports a portrait of the journalist, accompanied by a sober message: “Goodbye Shireen, goodbye the voice of Palestine.”