Probe into killing of journalist
PALESTINIAN President Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday that Israeli authorities were “fully responsible” for the killing of a veteran Al Jazeera reporter during clashes in the occupied West Bank and called for an international investigation.
Shireen Abu Akleh suffered a gunshot wound to the head in Jenin on Wednesday. Al Jazeera and Qatar, where the news network is based, accused Israeli troops of the killing.
Israel, which has voiced regret at Abu Akleh’s death, said that the fatal shot might have been fired by a Palestinian gunman. It has proposed a joint investigation with the Palestinians, asking them to provide the bullet for examination.
“We rejected the joint investigation with the Israeli occupation authorities because they committed the crime and because we don’t trust them,” said Abbas during an official memorial ceremony for Abu Akleh, who was Palestinian-American.
He said that the Palestinian Authority “will go immediately to the International Criminal Court in order to track down the criminals”.
The body of Abu Akleh, 51, was driven in a motorcade from a hospital in the Palestinian hub city of Ramallah towards Abbas’s compound. Hundreds of mourners lined both sides of the road, some throwing flowers.
The death drew international and Arab condemnation, including from the White House, which demanded a “comprehenisve investigation”.
Yesterday, the Israeli military said that it was investigating the possibility that the fatal shot may have been fired by one of its soldiers, according to an Israel Defense Forces official.
The official said the military was investigating three separate shooting incidents involving its soldiers following the death of the reporter,
The acknowledgment that one of Israel’s soldiers might have been culpable marked a significant backtrack from Israel’s initial explanation for the shooting – that Abu Akleh was “most likely” hit by fire from Palestinian militants.
The IDF official, said that the military was looking into an exchange of gunfire between Israeli soldiers in a vehicle and one or more armed Palestinian
men who he said were shooting at the vehicle. The official said that the shooting occurred on a street roughly 150m from the spot where Abu Akleh was killed. Of the three incidents being investigated, it was “the more probable to be involved in the death of Shireen”, the official said.
“A soldier with a rifle and a very good aiming system was shooting toward a terrorist with an M16, in very good condition, very clear picture, that was shooting on our troops. What we are checking now is the location of Shireen,” he said, adding that military investigators had taken the rifles from Israeli service members involved in the incident to have them available for ballistic testing.In the hours following the killing of Abu Akleh, Al Jazeera and Palestinian authorities said that Israel was responsible.
Multiple witnesses isaid there had been no exchanges of gunfire between the Israeli military and Palestinian gunmen in the area where Abu Akleh was reporting, or at the time she was shot – contradicting Israeli assertions that she was caught in crossfire.
Israel said it had requested the launch of a joint investigation with the Palestinian Authority that would be monitored by US officials.
Yesterday, Palestinian Civil Affairs Minister Hussein Al Sheikh called the killing an “assassination”. He said that the Palestinian Authority had refused to co-operate with Israel in the investigation and would not hand over the bullet that killed Abu Akleh to Israeli authorities, saying it had been taken for an initial ballistics examinations to An-Najah University in Nablus.
Sheikh said that the Palestinian Authority would release the results of the investigation when it is complete to Abu Akleh’s family and the public, as well as to US, Qatari and other relevant authorities (Al-Jazeera is based in Qatar.)
Palestinian witnesses on the scene said the fighting in Jenin, during an Israeli raid on the town, was far from where Abu Akleh was stationed and had ended well before she was hit.
Ali al-Samudi, the producer, who was wounded in the back, said the area where the journalist waited was “dead quiet” when individuals shots came their way.