At the outset of Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral procession in Jerusalem on Friday, masked Israeli police officers battled with Palestinian mourners and surged at one point at the party carrying her coffin.
Television video showed police officers charging into scores of flag-waving and shouting Palestinians in the complex of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem. At one point, the party transporting Abu Akleh’s coffin backed up into a wall and nearly dropped the casket, retrieving it just as one end struck the ground.
After a few moments, her coffin was loaded onto a vehicle and driven to the Cathedral of the Annunciation of the Virgin in Jerusalem’s Walled Old City, where the funeral was held calmly. Abu Akleh, who has been covering Palestinian events and the Middle East for nearly two decades, was shot on Wednesday while reporting on an Israeli operation in the occupied West Bank.
Palestinian officials called Abu Akleh’s death an assassination by Israeli soldiers. The Israeli government first said that Palestinian fire was to blame, but authorities have also stated that they cannot rule out the possibility that she was killed by Israeli gunfire.