“Abu Akleh was killed in a targeted attack by Israeli forces”, “the bullet that killed her came from an Israeli weapon”, “several witnesses attribute the responsibility to Israeli soldiers”.
After the death of the Al Jazeera journalist, three independent investigations conducted separately by as many media outlets reached the same conclusion.
The US news agency Associated Press, the US television network CNN and the investigative journalism group Bellingcat were unable to examine the bullet that struck Shireen Abu Akleh, but collected and analyzed dozens of direct testimonies, videos, audio recordings and they crossed, verified and geolocated, and then submitted them to the scrutiny of forensic technicians and experts in explosives and weapons.
At the moment in which the journalist was killed, on the morning of May 11 in Jenin, in the West Bank, there were no fighting between Palestinians and Israelis, and – albeit with different nuances due to the extent of the evidence gathered in the three investigations – the common conclusion is that the reporter was deliberately shot by an Israeli sniper: Shireen Abu Akleh was wearing a bulletproof vest, with big letters written “press”, and was killed by a single bullet that hit near the ear, in an unprotected place between the helmet and the vest.
On May 26, the Palestinian chief prosecutor Akram al Khatib also reached the same conclusions, who made public the results of his investigation: Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by an Israeli soldier with a US Ruger M40 sniper rifle.
This is not the first time this has happened. In an article published online in Internazionale, Catherine Cornet recalls that according to the International Federation of Journalists, at least 46 Palestinian journalists have been killed by the Israeli armed forces in the last twenty years. ◆