Israeli police attack funeral of slain Palestinian journalist

PALESTINE, MAY 13 REUTERS-Masked Israeli police officers clashed with Palestinian mourners and at one point charged at the group carrying the coffin of killed Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh at the start of her funeral procession in Jerusalem on Friday.

The police officers charged at scores of flag-waving and chanting Palestinians in the compound of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, television footage showed. At one point the group carrying Abu Akleh’s coffin backed against a wall and almost dropped the casket, recovering it just before one end hit the ground.

A few minutes later, her coffin was placed in a vehicle that headed toward the Cathedral of the Annunciation of the Virgin in Jerusalem’s Walled Old City, where the ceremony proceeded peacefully. Abu Akleh, who had covered Palestinian affairs and the Middle East for more than two decades, was shot while reporting on an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday. Palestinian authorities described Abu Akleh’s killing as an assassination by Israeli forces. Israel’s government initially suggested Palestinian fire might have been to blame, but officials have also said they could not rule out it was Israeli gunfire that killed her.