A 26-year-old American woman was fatally shot on Friday in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where witnesses said she was taking part in a protest against a settler outpost when Israeli forces opened fire.
And in a separate incident in a town a few miles away, a 13-year-old Palestinian girl was shot and killed as she watched from a window while Israeli settlers and troops violently clashed with Palestinians, according to the town’s mayor.
Their deaths add to the rising tide of West Bank violence since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel prompted the war in Gaza. According to the United Nations, Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than 600 people in the West Bank, the largest toll in years; many of those killed were claimed as members by militant groups, but others appear to have been civilians.
In the shootings on Friday, witnesses and Palestinian officials said Israeli soldiers had fired the shots that killed Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, who was a dual citizen of the United States and Turkey, and the Palestinian girl, Bana Laboom. The Israeli military acknowledged that its troops had opened fire in the vicinity of both events but said it was still investigating them.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken called Ms. Eygi’s death “a tragic loss” and extended condolences to her family. He added that “the most important thing to do is to gather the facts.”
“First things first, let’s find out exactly what happened, and we will draw the necessary conclusions and consequences from that,” Mr. Blinken told reporters at a news conference during a visit to the Dominican Republic.
President Biden, arriving in Michigan on Air Force One, responded to shouted questions from reporters about Ms. Eygi’s death that he had just finished a call with his team to discuss the situation and would have more information later.
Turkey’s foreign ministry said that Ms. Eygi was also a Turkish citizen. Unlike the United States, Turkey directly blamed Israel’s government for her killing. The news of her death was widely decried in Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a post on social media, condemned what he called “Israel’s barbaric intervention” against the demonstration that Ms. Eygi had been participating in.
Ms. Eygi, who arrived in the United States as an infant and lived in Seattle, had recently arrived in Israel to join activists affiliated with the International Solidarity Movement, who demonstrate alongside Palestinians in the 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 legalize the outpost.
By 2:35 p.m., she was dead, her head split by a bullet, in Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, said Fouad Nafia, the hospital’s director.
“She was not standing next to anything. Nothing was happening there,” said Jonathan Pollak, a hard-left Israeli activist who said he was roughly 50 feet away from Ms. Eygi. “And they shot her in the head.”
The demonstrations around Beita began before the current war between Israel and Hamas. Israeli settlers took over a nearby hilltop 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.
The outpost was illegal under Israeli law when it was established, lacking Israeli government authorization. But in June, Israel’s cabinet agreed to retroactively legalize five such outposts, including Evyatar, following a demand by Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli finance minister and a settler leader.
Most of the world considers all Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank to be illegal under international law, which Israel disputes. Roughly 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the territory alongside nearly three million Palestinians, who live under Israeli military occupation.
On Friday, the Israeli military said soldiers had “responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity” who threw stones at Israeli forces. Witnesses on the scene did not deny that some protesters had hurled rocks at Israeli troops, but they said the clashes were over when Ms. Eygi was shot.
The protest began around noon, with dozens of residents and a smattering of international activists, including Ms. Eygi, rallying near Jabal Sbeih, the hilltop upon which Evyatar sits, the witnesses said. The Israeli military had preceded them; the Palestinian residents conducted a communal prayer on the scene.
After the prayers were finished, clashes broke out, witnesses said.
Some demonstrators threw stones at Israeli soldiers some distance away, while the soldiers fired tear gas and some bullets, said Hisham al-Dweikat, a Beita resident who attended the demonstration. The group of demonstrators then headed downhill roughly 220 yards into the built-up outskirts of the town, away from the troops, he added.
The Israeli soldiers remained in roughly the same position, taking over the rooftop of a nearby building, said Mr. Pollak, the Israeli activist at the rally. By then, people had mostly scattered and there were no clashes in the area, he said.
“I was standing in the road,” said Mr. Pollak. “And she was standing in an olive grove further away.”
About a half an hour after the demonstrators had retreated, Mr. Pollak said he saw one of the soldiers on the roof fire a single gunshot. He took cover as he heard a second gunshot, he added.
One shot wounded a Palestinian man, he said. The International Solidarity Movement said the man was struck in the leg, although one witness said the bullet had first ricocheted off a metal pole.
The other hit Ms. Eygi in the head, he said. She was too far away from the soldiers to pose them a threat, he added.
“I put my hand on the back of her head to try and stop the bleeding,” said Mr. Pollak. “She had a very weak pulse.”
Ms. Eygi was rushed to a local clinic in Beita before being taken by ambulance to the largest nearby city, Nablus. By the time she arrived, she was no longer breathing, said Dr. Nafia, the hospital director.
Akram Khatib, the Palestinian Authority’s attorney general, said Palestinian health officials would conduct an autopsy on Ms. Eygi’s body. Reached by phone, he declined to say whether the authority would work with Israeli authorities to conduct the forensic analysis.
Bana Laboom, the 13-year-old, was killed in Qaryut, a village near Nablus, where there was a clash between a large group of Israeli settlers and Palestinians, with both sides throwing stones, according to Yousef Muammar, the village mayor.
The Israeli military later raided the center of the town, Mr. Muammar said, leading to more clashes. In a written statement, the Israeli military said it was trying to disperse the rioting.
Bana was watching the events from a window when a bullet struck her, Mr. Muammar said. Adam al-Johari, a Palestinian paramedic, said he found the girl dead minutes later.
Both said the Israeli military had fired the deadly gunshot. The Israeli military said security forces on the scene had fired “shots into the air” in an attempt to end the clashes, adding that it was still looking into reports that the child had been struck by gunfire.
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