EGYPT – A young Turkish-American woman, Aysenur Eygi, was shot and killed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Friday, according to US and Palestinian officials, while she was taking part in a protest near Nablus. Eygi was shot in the head by Israeli forces responding to the gathering, according to two eyewitnesses who spoke to CNN. The 26-year-old had been participating in a weekly protest against an Israeli settlement near the Palestinian village of Beita, they also said.

The Israeli military has admitted to firing at the demonstrators. In a statement, the IDF added that its forces “responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them.” The IDF is “looking into reports that a foreign national was killed as a result of shots fired in the area,” it also said.

Eygi had been volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), the same pro-Palestinian activist group as Rachel Corrie, a US citizen who was killed in 2003 while trying to block an Israeli bulldozer from razing Palestinian homes in Gaza. “This morning brought the awful news that Israeli troops reportedly killed recent UW graduate Aysenur Eygi in the West Bank,” University of Washington President Ana Mari Cauce said in a statement. “Aysenur was a peer mentor in psychology who helped welcome new students to the department and provided a positive influence in their lives.”

She was a University of Washington graduate who graduated from the Seattle-based institution this spring. Protests at Beita are common. The Palestinian town is next to a ramshackle Israeli settler outpost known as Evyatar. The settlement was unauthorized by the Israeli state until it was legalized earlier this year. All Israeli settlements are considered illegal under international law. (CNN)…[+]