Israeli soldiers fatally shot an American woman at a West Bank protest, witnesses say
World
The Israeli military said it was looking into reports that troops had killed a foreign national
NABLUS, West Bank (AP) — 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.
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.
Shireen Abu Akleh — a Palestinian-American journalist with the Al Jazeera news network — was shot to death covering an Israeli raid in the West Bank in 2022. The United States concluded an Israeli soldier likely killed her by mistake, and Israel acknowledged that was a “high probability” but not certain and ruled out a criminal investigation. Al Jazeera accuses troops of intentionally killing her.
A handful of Americans have been killed in the West Bank since the Israel-Hamas war began, apparently by Israeli fire. Two Palestinian American teens, Mohammad Khdour and Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, were shot to death in the span of a month while driving close to their villages. The findings of U.S. and Israeli investigations into their deaths have not been released.
In a statement Thursday, U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said President Joe Biden’s administration has not done enough “to pursue justice and accountability” for Khdour and Abdel Jabbar. He said it must “use American influence to demand the prosecution of those responsible for harm against American citizens.”
