US officials have concluded that firing from Israeli positions is likely Al-Jazeera journalist Sherine Abu Akleh was killed On Monday, the US State Department said there was “no reason to believe” that her shooting was premeditated.
The discovery came in a statement by US State Department spokesman Ned Price after what the US said were inconclusive US-supervised tests of the bullet found from Abu Akle’s body. It said “independent third party examiners” had conducted “a very detailed forensic analysis”.
“Ballistics experts determined that the bullet was severely damaged, preventing a clear conclusion” on who fired the shot, Price said in the statement.
Abu Akleh, a veteran Palestinian-American reporter who was known throughout the Arab world, was so shot dead While covering an Israeli military raid on May 11 in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. Palestinian eyewitnesses, including her crew, said that she was killed by Israeli forces and that there were no armed men in the immediate vicinity.
Island via AP
Israel says she was killed during a complex battle with Palestinian militants and that only a forensic analysis of the bullet will confirm whether it was an Israeli soldier or a Palestinian militant. It has strongly denied being deliberately targeted, but says an Israeli soldier may have accidentally hit it during a shootout with an activist.
Price said US security officials examined the results of two separate Palestinian and Israeli investigations and “concluded that shooting from IDF positions was most likely responsible for the killing of Shirin Abu Akle.”
Price said that the United States “found no reason to believe that this was intentional, but rather the result of tragic circumstances during a military operation led by the Israel Defense Forces against the Palestinian Islamic Jihad factions.”
The Abu Okla family said in a statement that they were “suspicious” that the investigation had not been able to reach a conclusion about who fired the bullet that killed her. They added, “There were many eyewitnesses to the killing,” as well as reports from “several local and international media, human rights organizations and the United Nations that an Israeli soldier fired the fatal shot.”
Magdy Mohamed / AFP
The Israeli military presented the findings as part of its investigation in a statement likely to anger the Palestinian Authority, which has vehemently rejected any Israeli role in the investigation and refused to share the bullet with Israeli authorities.
The military said that while the bullet remained in the custody of US officials throughout the operation, it was examined by Israeli experts in a forensic laboratory in Israel.
The army said in a statement that General Aviv Kohavi, the army’s chief of staff, had ordered the investigation to continue “using all available means.” She said that any decision on the start of a criminal investigation will not be made until after the completion of the field investigation.
The Palestinian Authority and Al Jazeera accused Israeli forces of deliberately targeting Abu Uqla within hours of her death. Al Jazeera called on the international community to “condemn and hold the Israeli occupation forces accountable for deliberately targeting and killing our colleague.”
that Reconstruction The Associated Press Whoever killed her backed up the accounts of Palestinian eyewitnesses, including her crew, of her killing at the hands of Israeli forces. Subsequent investigations by CNN, New York times and the Washington Post They came to similar conclusions.
Abu Aqla, 51, was born in Jerusalem. She started working for Al Jazeera in 1997 and wrote regularly for camera from all over the Palestinian territories.
CBS News reporter good privilege He knew Abu Okla personally and worked with her in Jerusalem. He described her as a generous and kind fellow who had always tried to give a voice to people whose voice was seldom heard.
Violence marred Abu Akle’s funeral procession On May 13, a large crowd gathered to transport her coffin from the hospital morgue to a church in Jerusalem’s Old City for her funeral. Videos showed Israeli riot police pushing and shoving mourners and firing tear gas.
Al-Jazeera said that Israel had warned Abu Akla’s brother against limiting the size of the funeral procession, and told him that Palestinian flags should not be raised and no slogans should be chanted, but he refused the request.
