Israeli troops shot and killed a Turkish-American woman who had been taking part in a protest against settlement expansion in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Friday, Palestinian and Turkish officials said. The White House said it was deeply disturbed by the death of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi and called on Israel to investigate. Turkey’s foreign ministry said she was shot in the head, and blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for her death. Palestinian officials described her as a 26-year-old activist from Seattle who held U.S. and Turkish citizenship. Eygi had recently graduated from the University of Washington in Seattle, the school’s president, Ana Mari Cauce, said in a statement describing the news of her death as “awful” and saying Eygi had a “positive influence” on other students. She studied psychology and Middle Eastern languages and cultures at the university, her family said in a statement late on Friday that was shared by the pro-Palestinian organization Institute of Middle East Understanding. Israel’s military said its troops had fired toward a male “main instigator” who posed a threat by hurling rocks at soldiers. The military was looking into reports that a female foreign national “was killed as a result of shots fired in the area.

The details of the incident and the circumstances in which she was hit are under review.” There was no immediate comment on the incident from Netanyahu’s office. Fouad Nafaa, head of Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, told rerporters that Eygi had arrived there in critical condition with a serious head injury. “We tried to perform a resuscitation operation on her, but unfortunately she died,” he said. The Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, WAFA, said the incident occurred during a regular protest march by activists in Beita, a village near Nablus that has seen repeated attacks on Palestinians by Jewish settlers. Eygi’s family described her as a “fiercely passionate human rights activist” who had recently participated in college campus protests against U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza. The statement called on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to pursue an independent U.S. probe into her killing. People react as they gather at a hospital after a U.S. citizen, who was taking part in a protest against settlement expansion, died of her wounds after being shot in the head by Israeli troops, in Nablus

Credit: Independent News Pakistan