Thousands of Palestinians say goodbye Friday in Jerusalem 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 raid, against a backdrop of persistent violence.
Israel, after saying that she had “probably” succumbed to Palestinian fire on Wednesday, said it did not rule out that the bullet was fired by its soldiers. The Palestinian Authority, Al Jazeera — the Qatari channel for which the reporter worked — and the Qatari government accused the Israeli army of killing her.
In East Jerusalem, a Palestinian sector of the city occupied and annexed by Israel, violence broke out when the journalist’s coffin was taken out of the hospital, when the Israeli police dispersed a crowd waving Palestinian flags.
Images broadcast by local television show the coffin failing to fall to the ground.
He was finally transported to the Old City where a mass was pronounced in tribute to the 51-year-old American-Palestinian reporter, in a packed Greek Orthodox church, noted an AFP journalist.
The alleys of the Christian quarter around it were overflowing with onlookers who had come to attend the funeral of the journalist who had grown up in East Jerusalem.
Israeli police closed off some entrances to the Old City, while crowds followed the coffin to the cemetery where Shireen Abu Akleh is to be buried.
” Not trust “
The funeral of the journalist takes place as new clashes broke out in the Jenin refugee camp, in the northern West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel. Thirteen Palestinians were injured there during a new operation by the Israeli army, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
An icon of Palestinian journalism, the reporter was killed in the same camp by a bullet while she was wearing a bulletproof vest marked “press” and a reporting helmet.
The Israeli army indicated on Friday that it was not immediately possible to determine the origin of the shooting which killed the journalist according to the preliminary results of its investigation. She considered that the shooting could as well be of Palestinian origin as of Israeli.
The Israeli authorities demand that the bullet be handed over to them in order to carry out a ballistic examination. The Jewish state has proposed that Palestinian and American experts be present during this examination.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Thursday he refused a joint investigation with Israel. “The Israeli authorities committed this crime and we do not trust them,” he said.
A first autopsy was conducted in the West Bank shortly after his death but no results have been released.
Al Jazeera accused Israeli forces of “deliberately” killing its star journalist.
The Jenin camp is a stronghold of the Palestinian armed factions from which the perpetrators of deadly attacks in recent months in Israel originated. The Israeli army has launched several operations there to apprehend wanted Palestinians.
Friday, during a new raid, it pounded a house and injured 13 Palestinians, including two by gunshot, hospitalized in serious condition, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
” Goodbye “
The death of Shireen Abu Akleh has sparked a wave of emotion in the Palestinian Territories, in the Arab world where his reports have been followed for more than two decades, in Europe and in the United States.
Thousands of West Bank Palestinians paid tribute to him Thursday at a ceremony at the Palestinian Authority headquarters in Ramallah.
The portrait of the journalist, the seventh to be killed in the Palestinian Territories since 2018 according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), was waved at rallies in Turkey, Sudan and Lebanon, and projected onto a building in Doha, the capital of Qatar. .
Several demonstrations have also erupted spontaneously across 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 at the place of his death in Jenin, children laid flowers.
On the roof of a building in the central square of Ramallah, the huge billboard now displays a portrait of the journalist, accompanied by a sober message: “Goodbye Shireen, goodbye the voice of Palestine”.