SEATTLE >> For her 26th birthday in July, human rights activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi gathered friends for a bonfire at one of her favorite places, a sandy beach in Seattle where green-and-white ferries cruise across the dark, flat water and osprey fish overhead.

On Wednesday night, hundreds of people traveled to the same beach in grief, love and anger to mourn her. Eygi was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers last Friday in the occupied West Bank, where she had gone to protest and bear witness to Palestinian suffering.

“I can’t imagine what she felt like in her last moments, lying alone under the olive trees,” one of her friends, Kelsie Nabass, told the crowd at the vigil. “What did she think of? And did she know all of us would show up here tonight, for her?”

Eygi, who also held Turkish citizenship, was killed while demonstrating against settlements in the West Bank. A witness who was there, Israeli protester Jonathan Pollak, said she posed no threat to Israeli forces and that the shooting came during a moment of calm, following clashes between stone-throwing protesters and Israeli troops firing tear gas and bullets.

The Israeli military said Eygi was likely shot “indirectly and unintentionally” by its soldiers, drawing criticism from American officials, including President Joe Biden, who said he was “outraged and deeply saddened” her killing.

“There must be full accountability,” Biden said in a statement released Wednesday. “And Israel must do more to ensure that incidents like this never happen again.”

The deaths of American citizens in the West Bank have drawn international attention, such as the fatal shooting of a prominent Palestinian American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, in 2022 in the Jenin refugee camp. The deaths of Palestinians who do not have dual nationality rarely receive the same scrutiny.

Eygi’s family has demanded an independent investigation.

On Thursday, Turkey’s justice minister said his country is investigating Eygi’s death. Turkish Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said the Ankara chief prosecutor’s office was leading the Turkish probe. Tunc said Turkey would present its findings to a U.N. court overseeing a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa over the war in Gaza.

“We will take every judicial step for our martyred daughter, Aysenur,” Tunc said.

As the sun set Wednesday, turning the sky on the horizon a pale orange, friends recalled Eygi as open, engaging, funny and devoted. The crowd spilled beyond a large rectangle of small black, red, green and white Palestinian flags staked in the sand to mark the venue for the vigil.