The Israel military says a US-Turkish woman shot dead at a protest in the occupied West Bank last week was “highly likely hit indirectly and unintentionally” by its soldiers.
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, had been at a demonstration against Jewish settlement expansion in the town of Beita last Friday when she was shot by Israeli forces.
The US secretary of state called Eygi’s killing “unprovoked and unjustified”, but President Joe Biden later said: “Apparently it was an accident. It [the bullet] ricocheted off the ground.”
Eygi’s family, along with the UN human rights office, have called for a full and independent investigation into her killing.
In a brief statement summarising their investigation findings, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said the gunfire had not been “aimed at her, but aimed at the key instigator of the riot.”
They added: “The IDF expresses its deepest regret over the death of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi.”
However, the US – Israel’s key ally – reacted angrily. Its Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said Israeli forces needed to “make some fundamental changes in the way that they operate in the West Bank, including changes to their rules of engagement.”
He said the IDF’s investigation appeared to support eyewitnesses’ testimony that Ms Eygi had been protesting peacefully and thus her killing was “unprovoked and unjustified”.
“No-one should be shot and killed for attending a protest, no-one should have to put their life at risk just for freely expressing their views,” Blinken told reporters shortly after Israel’s release of the findings.
Ms Eygi had arrived as a volunteer in the West Bank just a few days before she was killed.
Her family has said her life “was taken needlessly, unlawfully and violently by the Israeli military”.
“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,” her family said in statement released after her death.
Prior to the release of the Israeli report, the US and Turkish governments had condemned Ms Eygi’s killing. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan branded it as “barbaric”.
In its statement, the IDF said the “incident” had taken place during “a violent riot in which dozens of Palestinian suspects burned tires and hurled rocks toward security forces at the Beita Junction.”
But the protest group which Eygi had been with at the time dismissed claims it threw rocks at Israeli soldiers, saying such assertions were “false”. They said their protest had been peaceful.
Witnesses and other protesters at the demonstration have also said while there were some clashes with Israeli soldiers, Eygi had not been near that area when she was hit.
Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli activist who was at the same protest as Eygi, said he heard two gun shots.
He told the BBC’s Newshour programme there had been “no stone throwing” at Ms Eygi’s location.
It had been her first time attending a protest in the West Bank, he said. She had been with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a pro-Palestinian organisation which takes part in weekly demonstrations at Beita against Israeli settlements.
Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem – land the Palestinians want as part of a future state – in the 1967 Middle East war.
The vast majority of the international community considers the settlements illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.