Photo: Collected
Israeli soldiers killed an American woman demonstrating against settlements in the West Bank on Friday, according to two witnesses who said she was shot while posing no threat to Israeli forces and during a moment of calm after clashes earlier in the afternoon.
Two Palestinian doctors said 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi of Seattle was shot in the head.
The United States government confirmed Eygi’s death but did not say whether the recent graduate of the University of Washington, who was also a Turkish citizen, had been shot by Israeli troops. The White House said it was “deeply disturbed” by the killing of a U.S. citizen and called on Israel to investigate what happened.
The Israeli military said it was looking into reports that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an “instigator of violent activity” in the area of the protest
The killing came amid a surge of violence in the West Bank since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, with increasing Israeli raids, attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis, attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians and heavier military crackdowns on Palestinian protests. More than 690 Palestinians have been killed, according to Palestinian health officials.
On Thursday, Israeli troops shot and killed a 13-year-old Palestinian girl, Bana Laboom, in her village outside the West Bank town of Nabul, Palestinian health officials said. There was no immediate military comment on the report.
Eygi,a volunteer with the activist group International Solidarity Movement, was attending a weekly demonstration against settlement expansion that has been held for years and has often brought Israeli crackdowns and protester stone-throwing.
Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli participating in Friday’s protest, said the shooting occurred shortly after dozens of Palestinians and international activists held a communal prayer on a hillside outside the northern West Bank town of Beita overlooking the Israeli settlement of Evyatar.
Messenger/UNB/Sourov
