American killed during West Bank protest as Israeli Forces open fire

A Turkish-American female activist was shot dead Friday during a demonstration against Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank town of Beita, where the army acknowledged opening fire.

Turkey identified the woman as Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, saying she was killed by "Israeli occupation soldiers" and condemning her "murder". The mayor of Beita and the Palestinian news agency Wafa also reported that she was killed by Israeli soldiers.

Eygi, in her mid-20s, arrived at the Rafidia hospital in Nablus "with a gunshot in the head, and we announced her martyrdom around 14:30 (1130 GMT)," hospital director Fouad Nafaa told AFP.

US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller called Eygi's death "tragic," without immediately assigning responsibility.

He said Washington was "urgently gathering more information about the circumstances of her death and will have more to say as we learn more".

Eygi was a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a pro-Palestinian organisation, and was in Beita to take part in a weekly demonstration against Israeli settlements, said Neta Golan, the group's co-founder.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank, where some 490,000 people live, are illegal under international law. The United Nations considers them an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Beita mayor Mahmoud Barham told AFP the incident occurred after a weekly Friday prayer performed in protest against an Israeli settlement outpost in the area.

He said he was later told that "a soldier from the (Israeli) army had fired two shots towards those who remained at the (demonstration) site, including the foreign activist, and that one of the bullets hit her in the head".

In a statement the Israeli army said its forces "responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them".

The army is "looking into reports that a foreign national was killed as a result of shots fired", it added.

  Surging violence  

The governor of Nablus, Ghassan Daghlas, told reporters that Eygi's death was an example of "American bullets" killing an American, a reference to Washington's military support for Israel.

"The Israeli occupation and the occupation government are fully responsible for everything that's happening, as well as the unjust world that supports the occupation government," he said.

Since Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel which triggered the ongoing war in Gaza, Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 661 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

At least 23 Israelis, including security forces, have been killed in Palestinian attacks in the territory during the same period, according to Israeli officials.

Last month a US citizen told AFP he was shot by Israeli forces and wounded in the leg during a protest against settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, as the Israeli military confirmed it fired live rounds to disperse the gathering.

Palestinian medics said at the time that a foreign activist was shot during the demonstration in the town of Beita, while the Israeli military said he was "accidentally injured".

Responding to Friday's incident, Hamas said in a statement it strongly condemned "the crime committed by the Zionist occupation army" resulting in Eygi's death.

"We consider this heinous crime to be an extension of the deliberate crimes committed by the occupation against foreign activists in solidarity with the Palestinian people, which have claimed the lives of dozens, most notably Rachel Corrie, who was crushed under the tracks of an occupation bulldozer in 2003," the statement said.

Corrie, 23, was killed in Gaza while she was acting as a human shield with a group of activists from the International Solidarity Movement to prevent troops from demolishing a Palestinian home.

Hussein al-Sheikh, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation executive committee, said on X that he extended condolences to Eygi's family.

"Another crime added to the series of crimes committed daily by the occupation forces, which require that their perpetrators be held accountable in international courts," he said.