Shireen Abu Aqla was killed by Israeli bullets, according to a United Nations human rights organization

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Tel Aviv – Israeli forces killed a veteran Palestinian-American journalist while covering a military raid in the occupied West Bank. On Friday, a spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights summarized the findings of the office’s investigation into the fatal shooting of Shireen Abu Akleh, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in May.

Ravina Shamdasani said in a statement that Abu Okla was not shot “from indiscriminate shooting by Palestinian gunmen, as the Israeli authorities initially claimed.”

Al-Jazeera news channel reporter with decades of experience covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was fatally shot in the head early in the morning of May 11, while covering an Israeli media outlet. Storming the city of Jenin in the West Bank. Witnesses said the shooting appeared to have come from a convoy of Israeli military vehicles, but Israeli officials initially said she was likely killed by Palestinian fire, before she backtracked, saying it was likely an Israeli soldier had shot her unintentionally. .

The UN conclusions – which included the finding that “several seemingly well-aimed individual bullets” were fired at Abu Akleh and three other journalists from the direction of Israeli forces – mirrored the conclusions of several independent investigations, including a Washington Post review, which found that Israeli forces Probably fired the fatal bullet.

On Thursday, 24 US senators Sent a letter to President Biden Urges the United States to “participate directly in the investigation” into the killing of Abu Akleh. The letter, citing the lack of progress toward an independent investigation – and the fact that Abu Okla was an American – said the US government “has an obligation to ensure that a thorough, impartial and open investigation into her shooting death is conducted.”

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On the day Abu Akleh was killed, IDF spokesman Ran Kochav first acknowledged the incident in a tweet at 7:45 a.m., saying: “The possibility of journalists being injured is being investigated, possibly by Palestinian fire.”

Later that morning, he told Army Radio that it was “likely” that a Palestinian gunman was responsible. By the end of the day, Defense Minister Benny Gantz retracted those assertions and said an Israeli soldier may also have been responsible for firing the fatal shot.

But a week after the killing, the military said it had found no evidence of criminal behavior in the killing, and therefore there would be no investigation by the military police.

“More than six weeks after the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh and the wounding of her colleague Ali Al-Samudi in Jenin on May 11, 2022, it is deeply worrying that the Israeli authorities have not conducted a criminal investigation,” the UN Human Rights Office said in a statement.

mail check -Based on a review of dozens of videos, social media posts, photos of the event, physical previews of the area, and two independent audio analyzes – it was found that an Israeli soldier most likely shot and killed Abu Okla. Audio analyzes of what would have been the potentially fatal gunshots indicated a person who fired from an estimated distance roughly the same as the distance between the journalists and the IDF convoy.

A Washington Post review found no evidence of Palestinian militant activity in the immediate vicinity of where Abu Oqla and a group of other journalists stood before the killing.

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“The perpetrators must be held accountable,” the UN statement said.

Ward Fahim from Istanbul.

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