Turkish American woman shot dead by Israeli forces in West Bank protest
Reuters | Posted: September 6, 2024 3:32 PM | Last Updated: September 7
Israel's military said it was looking into circumstances of killing of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi
A U.S. citizen taking part in a protest against settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank died of her wounds on Friday after being shot in the head by Israeli troops, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
Turkey's Anadolu news agency said the woman was a dual Turkish American citizen. It was not immediately clear how long she had been in the West Bank.—
The Turkish Foreign Ministry said on Friday it had learned that a Turkish citizen was killed near Nablus.
"We have learned with deep regret that our citizen Aysenur Ezgi Eygi has been killed by the Israeli occupation forces," the statement said.
The U.S. State Department also confirmed the death.
"We are urgently gathering more information about the circumstances of her death and will have more to say as we learn more," State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said, calling her death "tragic."
"We have no higher priority than the safety and security of American citizens," Miller said.
'I found her lying on the ground'
Jonathan Pollack, an activist who was at the protest, saw what happened when Eygi was shot.
Pollack says clashes broke out after the Friday prayer ended and the weekly protest against the presence of Jewish settlements started.
"The army shot tear gas and live ammunition immediately," he told a videographer who shared the interview with CBC.
"These were two separate shots of live ammunition ... one after the other. The first one hit a metal object and then a young man from the village in his thigh. And then I heard another shot, and then, I heard people calling my name in English, saying, 'We need help.'"
He said he ran over to the olive groves where Eygi had fallen to the ground upon being hit and was being tended to by other protesters.
"I found her lying on the ground beside the tree bleeding from her head," Pollack said. "I put my hand under her head to try and stop the bleeding. I took her pulse. She had a very weak pulse."
He said he has been taking part in such protests for 20 years and it is not the first time they have turned deadly.
"What happened today is no accident," he said. "It's an intentional killing that is now receiving the light of day because she is an American citizen ... It was a heinous crime."
Hospital official says resuscitation efforts failed
The Israeli military said it was looking into the report.
Fouad Nafaa, the head of the Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, told Reuters the woman arrived at the hospital in a very critical condition, with a serious head injury.
"We tried to perform a resuscitation operation on her, but unfortunately, she died," he said.
WAFA said the shooting occurred during a regular protest march by activists in Beita, a town near the city of Nablus that has seen repeated attacks by Israeli settlers.
The rise in violent attacks by settlers on Palestinian villages in the West Bank has caused growing anger among Western allies of Israel, including the United States, which has imposed sanctions on a number of individuals.
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Friday's death comes a few weeks after around 100 settlers attacked the village of Jit, in the northern West Bank, drawing worldwide condemnation and a promise from the government of swift action against anyone found guilty of violence.
Palestinians and humn rights groups regularly accuse Israeli forces of standing by as attacks take place and even joining in themselves.
Dozens killed in recent Jenin-area operation
The incident came as Israeli forces pulled out of the Palestinian city of Jenin on Friday, after a nine-day operation in which thousands of residents were displaced from their West Bank homes. The operation saw running gunbattles between Israeli troops and Palestinian fighters from factions including Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Fatah.
Road diggers began clearing piles of debris and rubble left by the operation, which involved hundreds of troops and police backed by helicopters and drones entering all areas of the city and the adjacent refugee camp as well as surrounding villages.
"When they entered, they used bulldozers and began destroying everything. They left nothing," said Jenin resident Samaher Abu Nassa.
The Palestinian foreign ministry accused the military of transferring the tactics used to level the Gaza Strip into the West Bank.
Jenin, in the northern part of the West Bank, has long been a stronghold of Palestinian armed factions, and the Israeli military said the operation, which also targeted the city of Tulkarm, was aimed at thwarting Iranian-backed militant groups planning attacks on Israeli civilians.
Israel said troops had killed 14 militant fighters during the operation, including the local commander of Hamas in Jenin. Forces also arrested 30 suspects and confiscated weapons and dismantled infrastructure including an underground weapons storage depot underneath a mosque and an explosives workshop.
In all 21 people were killed in Jenin during the operation. Many were claimed as members by the armed factions but a number were uninvolved civilians, including a 16-year-old girl, apparently shot by a sniper while looking out of the window.
While the Israeli military's main focus over most of the past year has been in Gaza, the West Bank has seen a surge in violence, with repeated clashes between the military and Palestinian fighters as well as raids by Jewish settlers on Palestinian villages and attacks by Palestinians on Israelis.
More than 680 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since Hamas led a murderous rampage in Israel on Oct. 7, according to Palestinian health ministry figures.
In the same period, dozens of Israeli civilians have been killed in attacks by Palestinians or in rocket and missile attacks from the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.