US woman allegedly shot dead by Israeli soldiers at West Bank protest

Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, died after being taken to a hospital in a critical condition with a serious head injury suffered during a protest in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli troops shot dead an American-Turkish woman who was taking part in a protest in the occupied West Bank, witnesses say.

Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, was fatally hit in the head after Israel Defence Forces (IDF) reportedly opened fire during demonstrations against Israeli settlements in the northern town of Beita.

Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli participating in the protest, said the shooting occurred shortly after dozens of Palestinians and international activists held a communal prayer on a hillside above the Israeli settlement of Evyatar.

Soldiers surrounded the prayer and clashes quickly broke out, with Palestinians throwing stones and troops firing tear gas and live ammunition, Pollak said.

He then saw Eygi, who was just metres behind him, “lying on the ground, next to an olive tree, bleeding to death”, he said.

Mariam Dag, another activist, recalled seeing an Israeli soldier fire bullets which hit a Palestinian protester and Eygi, who she said had arrived in the West Bank on Tuesday.

“The shots were coming from the direction of the army. They were not coming from anywhere else,” she said.

Fouad Nafaa, head of the Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, said Eygi had arrived at the hospital in a critical condition with a serious head injury.

“We tried to perform a resuscitation operation on her, but unfortunately, she died,” he told Reuters.

Yesterday, the White House condemned the death of Eygi but did not say whether she had been shot by Israeli troops.

Sean Savett, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said Washington was “deeply disturbed by the tragic death of an American citizen” in the West Bank.

“We have reached out to the government of Israel to ask for more information and request an investigation into the incident,” Savett said in a statement.

Eygi was reportedly born in Antalya, a city in Turkey’s south. Oncu Keceli, a spokesman for the Turkish foreign ministry, said the country would exert “all effort to ensure that those who killed our citizen is brought to justice”.

In a statement, the IDF said its forces had “responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them”.

It said: “The IDF is looking into reports that a 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.”

In a separate incident in the West Bank village of Qaryut on Friday, a 13-year-old girl was killed during clashes with Israeli forces, Palestinian health officials said.