Palestinians mourn American activist killed by Israeli snipers in Nablus

Palestinians have mourned Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, an American activist of Turkish descent, who was killed by Israeli forces during a peaceful protest in the occupied West Bank. 

Carrying Palestinian flags, the mourners gathered outside the Rafidia hospital in Nablus city on Sunday to pay a final farewell to the 26-year-old slain activist with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

Eygi’s body is being kept in the morgue of the Rafidia hospital, where she was pronounced dead due to gunshot wounds.

She was shot in the head on Friday during a protest against illegal Israeli settlements in the town of Beita, near Nablus.

An autopsy report confirmed that she was killed by an Israeli sniper’s bullet to the head, Nablus governor Ghassan Daghlas said on Saturday.

“Aysenur was an American citizen who was killed by an American bullet paid for by the American people. It is high time that Israel is held accountable for its crimes and that it is [no longer] sponsored by the American regime,” said Jonathan Pollack, an ISM activist.

“The bullet that killed Aysenur is the same bullet that killed 17 other protesters in Beita since 2021,” he added. “It is the same bullet that killed people in Nur al-Shams and in Jenin and throughout the escalation in the West Bank. It is the same bullet that Israel used to perpetrate the genocide in Gaza with complete impunity.”

Meanwhile, Mahmoud Aloul, deputy chairman of the Fatah party, said Eygi’s body will be held in the Rafidia hospital’s morgue while Turkish and US authorities come to an agreement on where she will be buried.

“The burial will be postponed until the parties reach an agreement. Otherwise, it would be Palestine’s honor to bury the martyr Aysenur on Palestinian soil,” he noted.

American activist shot dead by Israeli forces in Occupied West Bank

Israeli occupation forces have shot dead an American activist of Turkish origin during a peaceful weekly anti-settlement march in the West Bank.

On Saturday, Eygi’s family demanded an independent investigation into her death, saying she was killed “unlawfully, and violently”.

“A US citizen, Aysenur was peacefully standing for justice when she was killed by a bullet that video shows came from an Israeli military shooter,” they said in a statement.

The Israeli military admitted firing at participants in Friday’s demonstration, claiming that Eygi had “hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them.”

The ISM dismissed the claim as “false” and described the protest as peaceful.

“Aysenur was more than 200 meters away from where the Israeli soldiers were, and there were no confrontations there at all in the minutes before she was shot,” the pro-Palestinian activist group said in a statement.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric called for a “full investigation of the circumstances” surrounding the killing of the activist, stressing that “people should be held accountable” for the incident.

Tensions have escalated in the West Bank in the past year, following Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip that has killed almost 41,000 Palestinians in the besieged territory since October 7, 2023.

Since that date, at least 690 Palestinians have also been killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank, according to the Health Ministry.

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