West Bank.- In a funeral procession in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Monday, the body of an American woman killed in a protest was carried out of a hospital morgue draped in the Palestinian flag as dozens of mourners chanted in unison demanding justice for her death.
The woman, 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, was shot in the head on Friday, Palestinian officials and witnesses said, when Israeli forces opened fire during a protest she attended in the West Bank town of Beita against a nearby Israeli outpost.
The Israeli military said it is investigating his killing.
Eygi, who was born in Turkey, will be buried after the funeral service, “according to the wishes of her family,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
He added that Turkish authorities are trying to airlift his body directly to Türkiye to avoid delays.
Mourners gathered at Rafidia Hospital in the West Bank city of Nablus on Monday afternoon, from where Eygi was taken after she was shot.
The brief funeral was attended by Palestinian and Turkish officials, hospital staff and even children who came across the procession after leaving their school.
“She was supporting an occupied country even though she was not from here,” said Azmi Miri, a Palestinian psychological services trainee at the hospital, who said she wanted to join the procession after hearing about Eygi’s killing.
Eygi’s family moved to the United States when she was a child and she grew up in Seattle.
He arrived in Israel last week to join activists affiliated with the International Solidarity Movement, a non-violent group resisting the Israeli occupation.
Among those paying tribute to Eygi was Abu al-Nimer Mouid, 63, from the West Bank city of Jericho who attends protests in Beita every week and was there on Friday when she was shot.
“They killed her in cold blood,” he said, referring to Israeli troops.
“We talked for a while and I invited her to visit my family in Jericho,” he added before bursting into tears.
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