The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said Friday (June 24) that Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed on May 11 by Israeli defense forces.

“All the information we have gathered – including from the Israeli army and the Palestinian attorney general – corroborates the fact that the shots that killed Ms. Abu Akleh and injured her colleague Ali Sammoudi came from the Israeli security forces and not from indiscriminate shooting by armed Palestinians as initially claimed by the Israeli authorities," said Ravina Shamdasani at a press briefing in Geneva.

"We found no information to suggest that there was any activity by armed Palestinians near the journalists," she said, saying it was "deeply disturbing that the Israeli authorities did not open to judicial investigation".

An icon for the Palestinians

The Palestinian chief prosecutor said on May 26 that the star journalist of the Al-Jazeera channel had been shot at by an Israeli soldier.

The Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas and the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera also accuse Israel of having killed Shireen Abu Akleh on May 11, 2022 near the Jenin refugee camp, a stronghold of the Palestinian armed factions where the Israeli forces were leading that day. there a raid.

The American-Palestinian journalist was wearing a bulletproof jacket with the word "press" written on it and a protective helmet, when she was hit by a bullet just below the cut of her helmet.

Another journalist on site was shot and injured. 

Born in 1971 to a Christian family in occupied East Jerusalem, this Palestinian, who also held US citizenship, studied journalism at Yarmouk University in Jordan before co-founding the Voice of Palestine radio station, based in Ramallah. 

She joined Al-Jazeera in 1997, a year after the launch of the channel, of which she became one of the star reporters.

Having covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for two decades, she was an icon for many Palestinians.

With AFP

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