Our team was present at St. Joseph Hospital, in Sheikh Jarrah, as mourners gathered to pay their respects to Shireen Abu Akleh, the iconic Palestinian journalist killed during an Israeli military operation in the northern West Bank city of Jenin.

Famed Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed on May 11 during a military operation in Jenin.

Palestine’s Ministry of Health stated that she was hit in the head by a live bullet whilst covering the operation in her role as Palestine correspondent for the Qatari broadcaster. She was rushed to a hospital in Jenin in critical condition and pronounced dead shortly after. Her colleague Ali al-Samoudi, who was also wounded at the scene but is now in a stable condition, blamed an Israeli sniper for the killing, whilst her employer has repeatedly refered to Abu Akleh’s death as “an assasination in cold blood”.

Initially, members of Israel’s government, including Prime Minister Naftali Bennet, shared a video of Palestinian gunmen in Jenin and suggested that they could have been responsible for the journalist’s death. However, an investigation from B’Tselem debunked this and the head of the Israeli military has since walked back the claim, suggesting it was unclear who was to blame for the killing of Abu Akleh. It has been reported that the Israeli military has since launched an investigation into whether one of their soliders was responsible for the killing.

Mourners gathered at St. Joseph Hospital, in Sheikh Jarrah, as the journalist’s coffin was being transported to her final resting place at Mount Zion Cemetery. They were met by Israeli police who attacked those grieving the iconic Palestinian reporter and, at one point, forced the pallbeareers to drop her coffin.

The video below is an insight into how our team validated footage we received from the scene.