Pictures showed police forces hitting coffin carriers with batons, during the funeral of Abu Aqila, on Friday, which witnesses said was killed by Israeli forces on Wednesday during a raid in the occupied West Bank.
The funeral scenes and the killing of the 51-year-old Palestinian reporter, who also holds American citizenship, sparked global condemnation and calls for an investigation.
And the Israeli police said in a statement, Saturday, that its commissioner had ordered an investigation to be completed in the next few days.
The statement added that “the Israeli police support its members, but as a professional organization that seeks to learn and improve, it will draw lessons from the incident.”
The police said they used force “when hundreds of rioters tried to sabotage the ceremony and harm the police,” according to the statement.
Before the burial, a large crowd gathered to escort the coffin from a hospital in East Jerusalem to a Catholic church in the nearby Old City, and many mourners raised Palestinian flags.
Then the Israeli police moved and pushed the mourners with batons, then riot police beat the coffin-bearers, causing the coffin to lose control and fall.
Police removed Palestinian flags from the mourners’ hands and fired stun grenades to disperse them.
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