NABLUS, West Bank (news agencies) — 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.
Soldiers surrounded the prayer, and clashes soon broke out, with Palestinians throwing stones and troops firing tear gas and live ammunition, Pollak said.
The protesters and activists retreated and clashes subdued, he said. He then watched as two soldiers on the roof of a nearby home trained a gun in the group’s direction and fired.
He said he saw Eygi “lying on the ground, next to an olive tree, bleeding to death.”
Mariam Dag, another ISM activist at the protest, also said she saw an Israeli soldier on a rooftop, then heard the firing of two live bullets. One hit a Palestinian protester in the leg; the other hit Eygi. Dag said she saw blood coming from the fallen woman’s head.
“The shots were coming from the direction of the army,” she said.
Eygi had just arrived in the West Bank on Tuesday, Dag said. She had been “very excited this morning to start. She was really keen on coming to the demonstration.”
“This has been happening to Palestinians for decades. This happened because of the impunity which the Israelis act with,” while Western governments do little, she said.
Two doctors confirmed Eygi was shot in the head — Dr. Ward Basalat, who administered first aid at the scene, and Dr. Fouad Naffa, director of Rafidia Hospital in Nablus where she was taken.
ISM said 17 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces at the weekly Beita protests since March 2020. A month ago, an American, Amado Sison, was shot in the leg by Israeli forces, he said, as he tried to flee tear gas and live fire.
At the University of Washington, where Eygi recently graduated with a degree in psychology, Aria Fani, a professor of Middle Eastern languages and cultures, recalled Eygi’s activism earlier in the year at a pro-Palestinian encampment, and remembered her as someone with a gift for listening to others.
Fani said he had tried to talk Eygi out of going to the West Bank but that she told him “she needed to bear witness for the sake of her own humanity.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. was “intensely focused” on determining what happened and that “we will draw the necessary conclusions and consequences from that.”
In a post on X, the Turkish Foreign Ministry condemned “this murder carried out by” the Israeli government. Turkey will work “to ensure that those who killed our citizen is brought to justice,” ministry spokesperson Oncu Keceli said.
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