American woman killed by Israeli soldiers at West Bank protest, witnesses say
NABLUS, West Bank — Israeli soldiers killed an American woman demonstrating against settlements in the West Bank on Friday, two protesters who witnessed the shooting told The Associated Press.
The U.S. government confirmed the death of 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi but did not say whether she had been shot by Israeli troops. The White House said in a statement that it was “deeply disturbed” by the killing of a U.S. citizen and called on Israel to investigate what happened.
Eygi was also a Turkish citizen, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli said, adding that the country would exert “all effort to ensure that those who killed our citizen is brought to justice.”
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.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. was “intensely focused” on determining what happened and that “we will draw the necessary conclusions and consequences from that.”
Israeli fire has killed over 690 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, Palestinian health officials say. In that time, attacks by Palestinian terrorists on Israelis in the territory have also increased.
Parents: Video a ‘wake-up call’
The war in Gaza began after Hamas-led terrorists launched a wide-scale attack into Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 people. Israel’s campaign in response has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilians and fighters in its toll.
The parents of a prominent Israeli American hostage whose body was recovered from Gaza said they want a Hamas terrorist propaganda video of him to serve as a “wake-up call to the world” to free the remaining hostages.
“No other family should go through what our family (and the families of the other recently executed hostages ) have endured,” wrote Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin, the parents of 23-year-old Hersh Goldberg-Polin.
In the undated video taken before he was killed and circulated Thursday by Hamas, Goldberg-Polin speaks under duress, saying he survived in Gaza with no medical care and little food or water, criticizing the Israel government for bombarding Gaza rather than agreeing to a deal, and calling on President Joe Biden to end the war.
Similar videos were released by Hamas throughout the week after six hostage bodies were recovered from a Gaza tunnel. The Israeli military says they were killed by their Hamas captors as Israeli soldiers drew near. Hamas has threatened to kill other hostages if Israel tries to rescue them.
German foreign minister visits
Germany’s foreign minister said the Israel-Hamas war can’t be resolved with a purely military approach and pressed for a cease-fire.
Speaking Friday after meeting in Israel with Israel Katz, Annalena Baerbock pointed to the killing of the six hostages by Hamas terrorists.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces appeared Friday to have withdrawn from the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, after a more-than-weeklong military operation.
During the operation, Israeli military officials said they were targeting terrorists in Jenin, Tulkarem and the Al-Faraa refugee camp to curb recent attacks against Israeli civilians.