West Bank (The Times Groupe)- Al Jazeera’s journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot in the face while covering an Israeli army raid on the Jenin refugee camp.
The veteran journalist was shot dead by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.
Shireen Abu Akleh, 51, was covering an Israeli army raid on the Jenin refugee camp when she was shot by a single bullet, despite wearing a press vest.
Ali al-Samoudi, another Palestinian journalist, was also wounded, but his condition is stable.
In a statement, Al Jazeera said that Abu Akleh was “assassinated in cold blood” and called on the international community to hold Israeli forces responsible.
IFJ secretary Anthony Bellanger described Abu Akleh’s killing as a “deliberate systematic act of targeting a journalist”.
“Yet again journalists, wearing press vests, clearly identified were targeted by Israeli snipers,” he said in a statement. “We will seek to add this case to the ICC complaint submitted by the IFJ, detailing such systematic targeting.”
IFJ GS @abellanger49 on the killing of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh 👇
"While the full details of this horrific murder are still emerging, testimony from journalists who were with her when she was killed point towards this being another deliberate… (1/4) pic.twitter.com/ovz8jJdBxX— IFJ (@IFJGlobal) May 11, 2022
Shatha Hanaysha, an eyewitness and fellow journalist, says snipers pinned journalists down when Abu Akleh was shot.
“We stood together as journalists and then we moved,” she told Al Jazeera. Live ammunition was fired at us, causing us to reach a point where we could not withdraw.”
“We were just facing snipers. If they had wanted to kill some of us, they could have shot before we got to this narrow area. This is a clear assassination of journalists,” she said.
“The one that killed Shireen was intended to kill her because he shot the bullet at an area of her body that was not protected,” Hanaysha also said.