Latest Updates: Israeli Police Attack Mourners at Palestinian Journalist’s Funeral

Israeli police attacking mourners carrying the casket of Shireen Abu Akleh in East Jerusalem on Friday.Credit…Maya Levin/Associated Press

JERUSALEM — Israeli police officers on Friday assaulted mourners at the funeral procession of a prominent Palestinian American journalist killed this week in the occupied West Bank, forcing pallbearers to nearly drop the coffin.

Video showed police officers in Jerusalem beating and kicking pallbearers carrying the coffin that contained the body of the journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, striking other mourners with batons, and forcing one man to the ground. During the commotion, the pallbearers were pushed backward, causing them to briefly lose control of one end of the coffin.

The incident happened outside a hospital in East Jerusalem, where mourners had gathered to take the coffin of Ms. Abu Akleh, who was a Christian, to a nearby church for her funeral.

It was one of several spasms of tension during a fraught afternoon, as riot police in several locations in East Jerusalem faced off against crowds of mourners waving Palestinian flags and chanting Palestinian slogans. Israel considers East Jerusalem part of its capital, but it is predominantly populated by Palestinians, and much of the international community considers it occupied territory.

The incident at the funeral procession lasted for roughly a minute, and followed a tense standoff between riot police and mourners in which at least one empty plastic bottle was thrown in the direction of the police.

The police then suddenly advanced on the coffin, swinging batons and aiming kicks at the mourners. As the police advanced, mourners threw projectiles, including what appeared to be a stick, and officers threw what appeared to be stun and smoke grenades.

In a statement, the Israeli police said they “took enforcement action” after some mourners began chanting “nationalist incitement” and after officers had given the crowd a warning. As the coffin was carried out of the hospital, police said, they were “forced to act” because “rioters began throwing stones toward the policemen.”

The police later distributed video showing an empty plastic bottle and two other bottle-shaped objects being thrown in the direction of the officers in the moments before they advanced on the pallbearers, and separate undated video showing several stones on the ground. There was no clear indication of when or how the stones had reached that spot.

Ms. Abu Akleh was shot dead on Wednesday morning in the occupied West Bank during an Israeli raid on the city of Jenin. Witnesses said she was killed by an Israeli soldier.

The Israeli Army said on Friday that while it was possible Ms. Abu Akleh was mistakenly killed by Israeli fire, its initial investigation suggested that she might also have been hit by a Palestinian gunman.

On Thursday, Israeli police warned Ms. Abu Akleh’s family about displaying “flags and slogans” at the funeral, said Ahmad Tibi, a Palestinian member of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament.

At one point during the funeral a man holding up a wreath stood between the pallbearers and police. Later, as the black hearse carrying her coffin began to slowly make its way through the crowd, an Israeli police officer ripped three Palestinian flags off the vehicle and threw them to the ground, video showed.

Church bells throughout the Old City rang out as mourners chanted, “With our souls, with our blood, we sacrifice for you, Shireen.”

A spokeswoman for Prime Minister Naftali Bennett of Israel declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the Israeli public security minister, Omer Bar Lev, who oversees the police.

The funeral was attended by thousands of people and came a day after a state memorial service was held in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Mourners stood in the courtyard of the Palestinian Authority’s presidential headquarters to eulogize and bid farewell to a person considered by many Palestinians to be a trailblazing journalist.

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, awarded her the Star of Jerusalem, also known as the Quds Star. One of the highest honors the Palestinian president can bestow, it is traditionally awarded to ministers, ambassadors and members of Parliament. Mr. Abbas described Ms. Abu Akleh as a “martyr for truth and for the free word.”

She was later taken to be buried in Mount Zion Protestant Cemetery, next to her parents.

Hiba Yazbek contributed reporting from Nazareth, Israel, and Iyad Abu Hweila from Gaza City.

Shireen Abu Akleh reporting from Jerusalem last June.Credit…via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

JERUSALEM — Shireen Abu Akleh originally studied to be an architect but could not see a future for herself in the field. So she decided to go into journalism instead, becoming one of the best-known Palestinian reporters.

“I chose journalism to be close to the people,” she said in a short reel shared by Al Jazeera soon after she was killed on Wednesday by gunfire in the West Bank. “It might not be easy to change the reality, but at least I was able to bring their voice to the world.”

A Palestinian American, Ms. Abu Akleh, 51, was a familiar face on the Al Jazeera network, where she spent 25 years reporting, making her name amid the violence of the Palestinian uprising known as the second intifada, which convulsed Israel and the occupied West Bank beginning in 2000.

Mohammed Daraghmeh, the Ramallah bureau chief for the Arabic language news outlet Asharq News, who was friends with Ms. Abu Akleh for many years, said she had remained committed to covering all issues affecting the Palestinians, big and small.

He had last spoken with her two days earlier, he said on Wednesday, and told her that he did not think the events in Jenin were important enough for a journalist as senior as her to cover.

“But she went anyway,” he said. “She covered the story the way it should be done.”

Palestinian artists painting a mural in honor of Shireen Abu Akleh in Gaza City on Thursday.Credit…Mohammed Abed/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The bullet that killed the Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on Wednesday has become a central point of contention in the competing efforts by Israelis and Palestinians to investigate who shot her.

The Palestinian Authority on Thursday declined a request to let Israeli officials examine the bullet that killed Ms. Abu Akleh, a prominent reporter for Al Jazeera who was killed in the occupied West Bank during an Israeli raid.

The authority said it would investigate Ms. Abu Akleh’s death independently, rejecting Israeli calls for a joint inquiry and for the bullet to be assessed in an Israeli laboratory under international supervision.

Palestinian officials and witnesses accused Israeli soldiers of killing Ms. Abu Akleh, dismissing Israeli claims that the journalist may have been hit by Palestinian fire during a shootout in Jenin, a city in the northern West Bank.

Palestinian leaders said that Israel could not be trusted to investigate the killing, while Israeli officials said that the Palestinians had refused to provide the bullet in order to hide the truth.

The bullet has become the focus of two competing narratives about the circumstances of her death. Witnesses said Ms. Abu Akleh was shot by Israeli soldiers in an area of Jenin where there were no Palestinian gunmen. But Israeli military officials said she was struck during a shootout between Israelis and Palestinians, and that she had been in the vicinity of a Palestinian armed with an assault rifle.

Video from the scene did not show the moment when the bullet hit Ms. Abu Akleh, or who fired it.

Both Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants involved in the Jenin clashes were carrying M16 assault rifles, guns that use the same 5.56-millimeter bullets, Israeli officials said.