NABLUS, West Bank — Israeli soldiers killed an American woman who was taking part in an anti-settlement protest in the West Bank on Friday, another protester who witnessed the shooting told The Associated Press. Two doctors said she was shot in the head.
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller confirmed the 26-year-old’s death, but did not say whether she had been shot by Israeli soldiers. He said the US was gathering more information about the circumstances of her death and would have “more to say”.
He and the doctors who treated her released the woman’s name, but the activist organization she volunteered for, the International Solidarity Movement, said her family had asked that she not be identified.
The Israeli military said it was investigating reports that soldiers killed a foreign national after shooting an “instigator of violent activity” in the protest area.
The woman who was fatally shot was taking part in a weekly protest against settlement expansion, demonstrations that have turned violent in the past. A month ago, U.S. citizen Amado Sison was shot in the leg by Israeli forces, he said, as he tried to escape tear gas and live fire.
Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli who also took part in the protest, said the shooting occurred shortly after dozens of Palestinians and international activists held a joint prayer on a hill outside the northern West Bank town of Beita, overlooking the Israeli settlement of Evyatar.
Soldiers surrounded the prayer hall and clashes quickly broke out, with Palestinians throwing stones and troops firing tear gas and live ammunition, Pollak said.
The protesters and activists, including Pollak and the woman, retreated from the hill and the clashes calmed down, he said. He then saw two soldiers standing on the roof of a nearby house point a gun in the group’s direction and fire at them. He saw flares coming out of the gun’s nozzle as the shots rang out. He said the woman was about 10 to 15 meters 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.
Two doctors said she had been 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.
“We tried to save the American citizen, we tried to resuscitate the heart during several stages, but unfortunately we were unable to restore the functioning of the heart,” Naffa told the AP, adding that she suffered severe bone fragmentation and damage to brain tissue.
Palestinian officials said the killing reflected how Israel has stepped up its crackdown on Palestinian protests in the territory since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas. Israeli forces rarely use live ammunition to quell protests inside Israel. But in the West Bank, Palestinian protests are frequently met with live fire.
Nablus Governor Ghassan Daghals wrote on X that “the Israeli occupation wanted to kill for the sake of killing.”
“A war of extermination in Gaza and a war in the West Bank that devours everything green,” he wrote. “It spares no child and no nationality.”
Hussein Al-Sheikh, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, wrote on X that the killing was “another crime in addition to the series of crimes committed daily by the occupation forces.”
The international community overwhelmingly considers settlements to be illegal under international law.
The Evyatar settlement was initially an unrecognized outpost under Israeli law, but it was legalized by the Israeli cabinet last month, in a move that far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said was a response to the recognition of Palestinian statehood by a number of countries.
Israeli gunfire has killed more than 690 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on October 7, according to Palestinian health officials. Since then, attacks by Palestinian fighters against Israelis in the territory have also increased.
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