Thousands say goodbye to the Bedouin who was killed by the Israeli Police in a controversial altercation in Jerusalem

2 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –

Thousands of people have marched this Sunday at the burial of the young Bedouin who died the day before during a controversial altercation with the Israeli Police in front of the Esplanade of the Mosques.

Mohamed Elasibi, 26, died from shots fired by the agents amid contradictory versions: the Israeli Police assures that he tried to seize the weapon from one of them while witnesses denounce that the Police opened fire without prior provocation when the young man tried to protect a woman from police harassment at the entrance to the Esplanade, in the middle of Ramadan.

The incident, according to the Police, was not recorded by the security cameras, a statement that the family considers unacceptable given the enormous usual surveillance over the area of ​​the incident, the Puerta de la Cadena, which leads to the sacred place.

In fact, the former chief of the Jerusalem Police Yair Itzhaki also came up against this thesis. “I do not contemplate the possibility that it is not documented by the Police. I was the one who personally installed several security cameras there,” Itzhaki said on Saturday during a cultural event in Rishon Lezion reported by ‘The Times of Israel’.

Elasibi has been buried in his hometown of Hura, in the Negev desert, while the family has reiterated that the incident be investigated after verifying that the agents opened fire on the young man no less than twenty times.

The funeral for the young Bedouin culminates a day of general strike in dozens of Israeli Arab cities in response to his death and a second night of vigils is expected, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.