Israeli police ​attack funeral procession of killed journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh - video

The Guardian
Fri, 13 May 2022 13:59 UTC

Israeli forces have stormed a Jerusalem hospital grounds as the coffin containing the body of a journalist shot dead earlier this week emerged before the burial, with police saying they acted against people 'disrupting the public order'. Footage showed Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Aqleh's coffin almost falling to the ground as police grabbed Palestinian flags from the crowd outside Saint Joseph's hospital in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem

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Israeli police attacked the funeral of Shireen Abu Akleh in occupied East Jerusalem on Friday, nearly causing mourners to drop the casket of the renowned Palestinian American journalist.

Abu Akleh was fatally shot while covering an Israeli raid on a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday. Fellow journalists who witnessed the shooting said Israeli forces had fired on them. Israel's prime minister and other senior officials initially said Palestinian militants were "likely" to blame, but the Israeli army admitted on Friday that one of its soldiers might have fired the fatal shot.

The assault on the mourners, who were beaten with clubs at a hospital in East Jerusalem, stunned viewers who watched it unfold on live television, further enraging Palestinians and the dead journalist's colleagues and fans.

Israeli police said they attacked the procession because mourners waved Palestinian flags and chanted nationalist slogans. An official Israeli police account shared drone video to support the authorities' claim that two of the mourners had thrown rocks at them. But a comparison of that video to ground-level news footage showed that the police video had been edited to remove the initial police charge and slowed down to make it seem as if a man who just waved his arms in frustration had thrown something at the officers.

The televised assault on the funeral of a beloved figure only intensified the outrage over her death and the images were quickly remixed and shared across social networks.