Israel says won’t allow interrogation of soldiers over journalist’s death

By Abdelraouf Arnaout

JERUSALEM (AA) – Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said Tuesday he will not allow any interrogation of Israeli soldiers in connection with the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

"No one will interrogate the IDF soldiers and no one will preach to us about fighting morals, certainly not Al Jazeera network," Lapid said on Twitter.

Early on Tuesday, Al Jazeera television said it filed a lawsuit with the International Criminal Court (ICC) over Abu Akleh’s killing while covering an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank.

The Doha-based network said the lawsuit includes “new witness evidence and video footage that clearly show that Abu Akleh and her colleagues were directly fired at by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF).”

“The evidence presented to the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) confirms, without any doubt, that there was no firing in the area where Shireen was, other than the IOF shooting directly at her,” Al Jazeera said.

Abu Akleh, 51, a Palestinian-American journalist, was killed on May 11, and the Palestinian Health Ministry said she was shot in the head while covering an Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Jenin.

In September, the Israeli army said Abu Akleh was likely killed by "wrong" gunfire from an Israeli soldier.

Several leading media agencies, including Al Jazeera, CNN, Associated Press, Washington Post, and the New York Times, conducted their own investigations, which all came to an end that Abu Akleh was killed by an Israeli bullet.

* Writing by Ahmed Asmar