US citizen Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, was fatally shot by IDF soldiers during a pro-Palestinian protest that took place near Nabulus in the northern West Bank on Friday.
According to AP News, protests started out as peaceful, but turned violent when activists began throwing stones at Israeli Defense Force soldiers, prompting them to fire live ammunition into the crowd.
One of the IDF bullets tragically struck Eygi in the head, killing her on site.
From AP News:
“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 killing came amid a surge of violence in the West Bank since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, with increasing Israeli raids, attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis, attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians and heavier military crackdowns on Palestinian protests. More than 690 Palestinians have been killed, according to Palestinian health officials.”
Biden State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller confirmed that the U.S. government was aware of the death in statements he made on Friday.
“We offer our deepest condolences to her family and loved ones,” he said. “We are urgently gathering more information about the circumstances of her death, and will have more to say as we learn more.”
The White House also responded to the reports stating it was “deeply disturbed” by the death while urging the IDF to open an investigation into the incident.
Another activist who was at the protest told reporters that there were “two separate shots of live ammunition,” that were fired by officers into the crowd.
The IDF did not even provide medical assistance, leaving Eygi to bleed out after receiving the fatal wound. It was only after other protestors noticed her that an ambulance was called.
”I found her lying on the ground, beside the tree, bleeding from her head,” he described to AFP news agency.
“I took her pulse, she had a very weak pulse, we called the ambulance,” he continued.
“From there we evacuated her to the village’s medical centre, where the doctor came into the ambulance and continued into the hospital, where they tried to resuscitate her but failed.”
Two witnesses on the scene claimed that the woman was shot after the situation had calmed down following the initial conflict and that Eygi posed no immediate threat to the officers that would warrant her getting shot at by them.
In addition to being a US national, Eygi was also a citizen of Turkey, whose foreign ministry also confirmed the death. The Turkish President, Recep Tayyip, called the actions by Israel “barbaric”.
Following the incident, the IDF released this statement:
“Today (Friday), during Israeli security forces activity adjacent to the area of Beita, the forces responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them.
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.”
This comes as protests are growing across the country in opposition to Netanyahu and his handling of the conflict in Gaza with Hamas. In recent weeks, tens of thousands of protesters have been consistently taking to the streets in fierce opposition to recent government actions.
Record Anti-Netanyahu Protests, Labor Strikes, Bring Israel To A Standstill https://t.co/RmZYaK8JTy
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 3, 2024
Despite the protests, the IDF shows no signs of slowing down, having committed another bombing that killed 27 just yesterday. Now they’ve escalated things even further by open firing into an open crowd of protesters with live ammunition – killing an American.
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