Israeli soldiers killed an American woman participating in an anti-settlement protest in the West Bank on Friday, another protester who witnessed the shooting told The Associated Press. Two doctors said she was shot in the head.
US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller confirmed the death of the 26-year-old woman but did not say whether she had been shot by Israeli troops. He said the US was gathering more information about the circumstances of her death and would have more to say.
He and the doctors who treated her released the woman's name, but the activist organisation she was volunteering with, the International Solidarity Movement, said her family had asked she not be identified.
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.
The woman who was fatally shot was attending a weekly demonstration against settlement expansion, protests that have grow
