Shireen Abu Akleh was a prominent Al Jazeera journalist, an American citizen, and a Greek Orthodox Christian. John Kiriakou describes her killing in the West Bank: standing behind a tree in a bulletproof vest and helmet marked PRESS, she stepped out and was shot in the face by an Israeli sniper, dying instantly.[1] Kiriakou adds that the IDF then entered the hospital where her body was being carried out, beat the pallbearers until they dropped the coffin, and fired rubber bullets and smoke grenades into the Greek Orthodox church during her funeral service — with, he says, “not a single word from the American government.”[2] He gives a closely matching account elsewhere, again describing her as shot instantly in the face by an Israeli sniper while wearing marked press gear, after which the IDF beat her pallbearers and fired rubber bullets and smoke grenades into the church during her funeral.[3]
The broader toll on journalists in Gaza
Kiriakou places Abu Akleh’s killing in the context of a much larger death toll: he says roughly 240 journalists were killed in Gaza over the course of just 60 to 90 days — more, he says, than all of the journalists killed in every other country of the world combined since World War I.[4]