NABLUS, West Bank — A 26-year-old American woman who was fatally shot while demonstrating against settlements in the West Bank on Friday was a recent University of Washington graduate, the university said.
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was attending a weekly demonstration against settlement expansion when she was shot by Israeli soldiers, witnesses told The Associated Press.
UW Professor Aria Fani told KOMO News Eygi graduated from the university in June and said she had studied psychology and Middle Eastern languages and cultures. He described Eygi as kind-hearted and deeply curious.
“She had smiling eyes that just recognized the humanity of whoever she spoke with,” Fani said. “She had earned the admiration and respect of all of her peers and professors.”
UW President Ana Mari Cauce released a statement Friday afternoon confirming Eygi was a recent graduate, adding that Eygi was “a peer mentor in psychology who helped welcome new students to the department and provided a positive influence in their lives.”
Cauce said this was the second time in the past year a member of the UW community had been killed in the region. UW alum Dr. Hayim Katsman, 32, was killed by Hamas militants in Israel during the surprise attacks. Katsman’s mother told KOMO News her son had received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington’s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies in 2021.
“I again join with our government and so many who are working and calling for a ceasefire and resolution to the crisis,” Cauce said in a statement.
U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, who represents most of Seattle released a statement about Eygi’s death saying it was a terrible tragedy.
“The killing of an American citizen is a terrible proof point in this senseless war of rising tensions in the region,” Jayapal’s statement said.
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Two protesters who witnessed Friday’s shooting told The Associated Press the shooting took place shortly after dozens of Palestinians and international activists held a communal prayer. The gathering was on the hillside outside the northern West Bank town of Beita overlooking the Israeli settlement of Evyatar.
The U.S. government confirmed Eygi’s death 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.
Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli who was participating in Friday’s protest, said Soldiers surrounded the prayer, and clashes soon broke out, with Palestinians throwing stones and troops firing tear gas and live ammunition
Pollak said he and Eygi retreated from the hill and the clashes subdued. He then watched as two soldiers standing on the roof of a nearby home trained a gun in the group’s direction and shot at them. He saw the flares leave the nozzle of the gun when the shots rang out. He said Eygi was about 10 or 15 meters (yards) behind him when the shots were fired.
He then saw her “lying on the ground, next to an olive tree, bleeding to death,” he said.
Mariam Dag, another ISM activist at the protest, also said she saw an Israeli soldier on a rooftop. Dag said she then heard the firing of two live bullets. One ricocheted off something metal and hit a Palestinian protester in the leg; the other hit Eygi, who had moved back into an olive grove, she said. Dag said she ran toward the fallen woman and saw blood coming from her head.
“The shots were coming from the direction of the army. They were not coming from anywhere else,” she said.
Eygi had just arrived in the West Bank on Tuesday, Dag said. “This was our first day on the ground together. She was very happy and very excited this morning to start. She was really keen on coming to the demonstration.”
“This has been happening to Palestinians for decades. This happened because of the impunity which the Israelis act with,” including help from Western governments, she said. Before Friday’s shooting, ISM said 17 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces at the weekly Beita protests since March 2020.
Two doctors confirmed Eygi was shot in the head — Dr. Ward Basalat, who administered first aid at the scene, and Dr. Fouad Naffa, director of Rafidia Hospital in the nearby city of Nablus where she was taken.
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.”
In a written statement shared on X, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said it condemned “this murder carried out by” the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
AP writersJulia Frankel, Aref Tufana, Aamer Madhani and Matthew Lee in Washington, and Jack Jeffery in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report.
