“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.
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