ISRAEL: According to the Israeli military, there is a “high probability” that one of its soldiers was responsible for the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who is Palestinian and American.
While reporting a raid in the occupied West Bank in May, the seasoned Al Jazeera correspondent was shot in the head.
It represents the military’s closest approach to taking accountability.
The inquiry into the incident has been essentially concluded as a result of the chief legal adviser to the military ruling out a criminal investigation of the implicated soldiers.
The family of Shireen Abu Akleh stated that they were “not shocked” by the IDF’s efforts to conceal the truth and deflect blame for her murder.
On May 11, Shireen Abu Akleh travelled to the Jenin refugee camp to report on an Israeli army raid that had resulted in gunfights between soldiers and Palestinian militants. She was donning a helmet and a press-branded blue flak jacket.
She was likely shot “by mistake by an IDF soldier, and of course, he didn’t identify her as a journalist,” an IDF senior officer stated on Monday.
He added that investigators had spoken to the involved soldier. “He told us what he did, and if he did it, it was done by mistake.” He continued by saying, “I want to emphasize the fighting environment that these soldiers were under. They were confined in a protected vehicle with multi-dimensional fire from every direction.”
The assertion that terrorist gunfire was heard in the area where journalists and onlookers had congregated is refuted by video footage captured when Shireen Abu Akleh was shot.
The clip shows repeated firing for many minutes in the direction of the location where the journalists were strolling, with Israeli troops reportedly 200m (656ft) away.
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