A 26-year-old American activist, Aysenur Eygi, has been shot and killed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank during an anti-settlement protest near Nablus, CNN reported.
The woman, who had U.S. and Turkish citizenship, was protesting against the expansion of illegal settlements in the Palestinian town of Beita, near Nablus, when she was shot by Israeli troops, according to eyewitnesses.
The Israel Defense Forces admitted Friday that its soldiers opened fired on demonstrators, saying they “responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them in the Beita area,” the BBC reported. The IDF said that it was “looking into reports that a foreign national was killed as a result of shots fired in the area.”
Eygi was rushed to a hospital in Nablus where she was later pronounced dead, AFP reported. Dr. Fouad Naffa, the head of the hospital where the activist was admitted, confirmed that an American citizen in her mid-20s died from a “gunshot in the head.”
According to CNN, Eygi was protesting as part of the International Solidarity Movement, a group that opposes illegal Israeli settlement building in the West Bank. In 2003, Israeli forces killed Rachel Corrie, another U.S. activist associated with the group, by running her over with a bulldozer as she protested the razing of Palestinian homes.