A Turkish American woman was fatally shot on Friday during a protest against an Israeli settler outpost near the town of Beita, in the occupied West Bank, witnesses and Palestinian officials said.

Three witnesses who had attended the protest said that Israeli forces had killed her. The Israeli military said it was looking into the “details of the incident and the circumstances in which she was hit.”

The state department spokesman, Matthew Miller, confirmed the woman’s death and identified her as Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, while offering condolences to her family.

“We are urgently gathering more information about the circumstances of her death,” he said. “We have no higher priority than the safety and security of American citizens.”

Turkey’s foreign ministry confirmed that Eygi, 26, was also a Turkish citizen and blamed Israel’s government for her killing.

Eygi, who lived in Seattle, had recently arrived in Israel as part of a group of international activists who demonstrate in solidarity with Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

On Friday, she joined the rally in Beita, where residents have been protesting for years — sometimes violently — against a settler outpost on lands claimed by the village. The Israeli government had recently said it would retroactively approve the outpost.

By 2:35pm (local time), she was dead, her head split by a bullet, in Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, said Fouad Nafia, the hospital’s director.

According to the UNs, Israeli forces and civilians have killed more than 600 Palestinians in the West Bank — the largest toll in years — since the Hamas-led attack on October 7 prompted the war in Gaza. Many of those killed were claimed as members by militant groups, but others appeared to have been civilians.

The demonstrations around Beita began before the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. Israeli settlers took over a nearby hill-top in 2021, erecting an outpost known as Evyatar on land claimed by the village. That prompted months of deadly protests in which several residents of Beita were killed and scores wounded.

New York Times News Service