Videos circulating on social media and eyewitness testimonies shed light on the circumstances regarding the death of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.
Videos circulating on social media—compounded with eyewitness testimonies—dispute Israel’s official stance that Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh was likely killed by Palestinian gunmen. Abu Akleh—a 51-year-old Palestinian-American veteran journalist—was killed on Wednesday morning as Israeli forces raided the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. Al Jazeera producer Ali Al-Samudi also suffered gunshot wounds in his back in the attack. Al Jazeera, the Palestinian Authority, and eyewitness accounts said Abu Akleh was killed by an Israeli live round. Israeli officials have said, «Palestinian terrorists» were likely the ones to have shot the journalist. Israeli officials—including Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and the country’s foreign ministry—shared a video appearing to depict Palestinian men yelling and scattering after one masked man fired a shot in an alleyway. Israeli government and media figures circulated the video with various quotes attributed to the men, most notably that they boasted about killing a soldier or an Israeli. The Israeli foreign ministry’s translation quotes the men as saying: «They’ve hit one, they’ve hit a soldier, he’s laying on the ground.»
The 27-second video starts with the masked man firing the shot. As gunfire can be heard in the background, the cameraman then can be heard saying in Arabic, «Be careful, they’re shooting at the house.»
The man filming also makes religious invocations, before frantically yelling at the other men to back away. In the midst of the incident, the cameraman then reportedly said, «One person was injured, a soldier was injured and fell on the ground.» Another man asked, «Why did they shoot him?»
Non-profit organization B’Tselem said their field researcher in Jenin visited both the alleyway where this video was filmed, as well as the location where Abu Akleh was shot.
