NEWS channel Al Jazeera formally asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) today to investigate the fatal shooting of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh as she was reporting from a Palestinian refugee camp in May.

Al Jazeera has accused the Israeli government of specifically targeting its journalists, calling Ms Abu Akleh’s death a war crime.

The news outlet wants ICC prosecutor Karim Khan to include the reporter's killing, as well as last year's Israeli air strike on Al Jazeera’s offices in the Gaza Strip, in his ongoing investigation into allegations of war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza.

“My family still doesn’t know who shot the deadly bullet,” Lena Abu Akleh, Shireen’s niece, told reporters during a press conference.

The family submitted their own request for an ICC investigation in September.

Following international pressure, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) admitted it was likely that one of their soldiers shot the prominent correspondent while she was reporting on a military raid in the West Bank.

The IDF denied the shooting was intentional and declared the case closed.

“No-one will investigate [Israeli] soldiers and no-one will preach to us about morals in warfare, certainly not Al Jazeera,” Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said in a statement in response to today’s filing.

However, a joint investigation by the London-based research group Forensic Architecture and Palestinian rights group Al-Haq in September 2022 found that Ms Abu Akleh’s killing was deliberate.

Al Jazeera saw the killing as yet another attack on the press freedom of Palestinians.

“Palestinian journalists have been targeted for doing their jobs as journalists,” Cameron Doley, representing Al Jazeera, told reporters after submitting the complaint to the world’s only permanent court for crimes of atrocity.

ICC prosecutors opened a preliminary examination into allegations of Israeli war crimes in Gaza and the occupied West Bank in 2015, but did not begin a formal investigation until last year after determining that the court had jurisdiction.

The US Department of Justice has launched its own investigation into the deadly encounter after US lawmakers were “disappointed” with the Israeli military’s response.

Abu Akleh obtained US citizenship while living in the United States as a child.