US: Israeli fire likely killed reporter

WASHINGTON — U.S. officials said Monday the bullet that killed veteran Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh was likely fired from an Israeli position. But they said it was too badly damaged to reach an absolute determination, and that there is “no reason to believe” she was deliberately targeted.

State Department spokesman Ned Price, announcing the results of the probe, said “independent, third-party examiners” had undertaken an “extremely detailed forensic analysis” of the bullet that killed her after the Palestinian Authority handed it over to them.

The results, announced ahead of President Joe Biden’s visit to the region next week, were unlikely to lay the matter to rest. The Palestinians reiterated that Israel was to blame, while Israel said its own investigation would remain open and did not address the U.S. conclusion that its troops were likely responsible.

Abu Akleh, a veteran Palestinian-American correspondent who was well known and respected throughout the Arab world, was shot and killed while covering an Israeli military raid on May 11 in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. Palestinian eyewitnesses, including her crew, say Israeli troops killed her and that there were no militants in the immediate vicinity or any exchange of fire at the time she was shot.

Israel says she was killed during a complex battle with Palestinian militants and that only a forensic analysis of the bullet could confirm whether it was fired by an Israeli soldier or a Palestinian militant. It has strongly denied she was deliberately targeted, but says an Israeli soldier may have hit her by mistake during an exchange of fire with a militant.

U.S. security officials examined the results of separate Palestinian and Israeli investigations and “concluded that gunfire from IDF positions was likely responsible for the death of Shireen Abu Akleh,” Price said in a statement.