Violence broke out on Friday, May 13, inside a hospital in Jerusalem after the coffin of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was released.
Footage broadcast by local television shows the coffin of the star reporter for the pan-Arab channel Al-Jazeera, killed on Wednesday in an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank, nearly falling to the ground as Israeli police disperse the crowd brandishing Palestinian flags.
Israeli forces broke into the grounds of St. Joseph’s Hospital in East Jerusalem, a Palestinian sector of the city occupied and annexed by the Jewish state.
Israeli police chasing Palestinian flags at #ShireenAbuAkleh’s funeral procession 👇 https://t.co/Dgi3BdV40c
Wave of emotion in the world
“If you don’t stop these nationalist songs, we will have to disperse you using force and we will prevent the funeral from taking place”, called an Israeli policeman through a megaphone in the direction of the crowd, according to a video released by the police. According to her, ” hundreds of people “ gathered at the hospital and stones were thrown at the police who were “forced to use riot dispersal means”.
‘Brutal Israeli special forces attack Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral procession leaving St. Joseph’s Hospital’notably denounced on Twitter Hanane Achraoui, a historical figure of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). “Israel’s inhumanity is on full display”she also claimed.
Shireen Abu Akleh’s coffin was eventually transported to the Old City, where a mass was celebrated in a church, before burial in a nearby cemetery.
The death of this reporter, icon of Palestinian journalism, has aroused a wave of emotion in the Palestinian territories, in the Arab world where her reports have been followed for more than two decades, in Europe and in the United States.
Shireen Abu Akleh, a 51-year-old Christian Palestinian who also has American nationality, was shot in the head while covering an Israeli operation in the Jenin Palestinian refugee camp in the northern West Bank.
Israel, after saying that she had ” most likely “ succumbed to Palestinian fire, said he did not rule out that the bullet was fired by his soldiers. The Palestinian Authority, Al-Jazeera and the Qatari government accused the Israeli army of killing her.
