Shireen Abu Akleh, Palestine’s face on the Qatari channel, covered a military raid in the Jenin refugee camp, when it was touched by fire, according to witnesses on the spot, Israeli positions.
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For more than two decades, Shireen Abu Akleh was the face of Palestine on the first antenna of the Arab world, the Qatari chain al-Jazira. Palestinians under the age of thirty have grown up by following the chronicles of the second intifada (2000-2005) from this discreet, courteous and pugnacious journalist. She had covered the low noise death of the Oslo peace process and the daily life of the end of the territories by the Israeli army, in force since the 1967 conquest. She was killed in Jénine on Wednesday, May 11 , by an Israeli shot, according to witnesses, the Palestinian Ministry of Health and its employer. It covered a raid led by the Israeli army in the refugee camp of this big city in the north of the West Bank.
al-Jazira condemns a “composure” murder, a “odious crime, which aims to prevent the media from doing their job”. The Qatari authorities specify that it has been touched by a bullet “in the face”. Transported to a critical hospital, she died of her injury. In a first press release, Israeli forces said they explored “the possibility that journalists [were] affected by Palestinian shooters”, without mentioning their possible responsibility. On army radio, an Israeli officer, Ran Kochav, said that the two journalists were standing near armed Palestinians, “amateurs, terrorists, who drew on our troops”.
Concordant testimonies
An Al-Jazira producer, Ali Al-Samodi, was also touched by a bullet in the back and hospitalized, but his condition is stable. At the Associated Press agency, he said he was with his sister among seven journalists who came to cover this raid early on Wednesday. All wore bulletproof vests barred with a “press” banner, which clearly identified them. They had passed the Israeli troops, to ensure that they knew their presence. Mr. Samoudi heard a first shot, then was hit by a second, the third killed Shireen Abu Akleh, he says, adding that no activist or resident of the camp was near them.
His sister Shaza Hanaysheh confirmed in Al-Jazira that no fight or shooting took place in their immediate vicinity. They tried to shelter behind a tree when the shots started. “I reached her before Shireen. She fell on the ground,” she said. The soldiers did not stop shooting even after her fall. Each time I was tending my hand to get her out of there, the soldiers pulled us Above. “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs proposed” a common medico-legal investigation “to the Palestinian Authority, which judges Israel” fully responsible. “
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