NABLUS, West Bank>> Israeli soldiers killed an American woman demonstrating against settlements in the West Bank on Friday, two protesters who witnessed the shooting told The Associated Press. Two doctors said she was shot in the head.

The U.S. government confirmed the death of 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi of Seattle — a recent graduate of the University of Washington — but did not say whether she had been shot by Israeli troops. The White House said in a statement that it was “deeply disturbed” by the killing of a U.S. citizen and called on Israel to investigate what happened.

Eygi was also a Turkish citizen, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli said, adding that the country would exert “all effort to ensure that those who killed our citizen is brought to justice.”

The Israeli military said it was looking into reports that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an “instigator of violent activity” in the area of the protest.

Eygi was attending a weekly demonstration against settlement expansion, protests that have grown violent in the past: A month ago, American citizen Amado Sison was shot in the leg by Israeli forces, he said, as he tried to flee tear gas and live fire.

Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli who was participating in Friday’s protest, said the shooting occurred shortly after dozens of Palestinians and international activists held a communal prayer on a hillside outside the northern West Bank town of Beita overlooking the Israeli settlement of Evyatar.

Soldiers surrounded the prayer, and clashes soon broke out, with Palestinians throwing stones and troops firing tear gas and live ammunition, Pollak said.

The protesters and activists, including Pollak and the Eygi, retreated from the hill and the clashes subdued, he said. He then watched as two soldiers standing on the roof of a nearby home trained a gun in the group’s direction and shot at them. He saw the flares leave the nozzle of the gun when the shots rang out. He said Eygi was about 10 or 15 meters (yards) 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.

“The shots were coming from the direction of the army. They were not coming from anywhere else,” said Mariam Dag, another ISM activist.

Eygi had just arrived in the West Bank on Tuesday, Dag said. “This was our first day on the ground together. She was very happy and very excited this morning to start. She was really keen on coming to the demonstration.”

“This has been happening to Palestinians for decades. This happened because of the impunity which the Israelis act with,” including help from Western governments, she said. Before Friday’s shooting, ISM said 17 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces at the weekly Beita protests since March 2020.

At the University of Washington, where Eygi recently graduated with a degree in psychology, President Ana Mari Cauce released a statement in which she recalled Eygi as a mentor to her peers who “helped welcome new students to the department and provided a positive influence in their lives.” Eygi also took courses on the languages and cultures of the Middle East.

Two doctors confirmed Eygi was 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.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. was “intensely focused” on determining what happened and that “we will draw the necessary conclusions and consequences from that.”