JERUSALEM: The family of a Turkish-American woman shot dead while demonstrating against Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank demanded an independent investigation into her death on Saturday, accusing the Israeli military of killing her “violently.”
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, was “shot in the head” while participating in a demonstration in Beita in the West Bank on Friday.
“Her presence in our lives was taken needlessly, unlawfully, and violently by the Israeli military,” Eygi’s family said in a statement.
“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.
“We call on President (Joe) Biden, Vice President (Kamala) Harris, and Secretary of State (Antony) Blinken to order an independent investigation into the unlawful killing of a US citizen and to ensure full accountability for the guilty parties.”
The Israeli military said its forces “responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them” during the protest.
Eygi was a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a pro-Palestinian organization, and was in Beita on Friday for a weekly demonstration against Israeli settlements, according to ISM.
In recent years, pro-Palestinian demonstrators have frequently held weekly protests against the Eviatar settlement outpost overlooking Beita, which is backed by far-right Israeli ministers.
During Friday’s protest, Eygi was shot in the head, according to the UN rights office and Rafidia hospital where she was pronounced dead.
Turkiye said she was killed by “Israeli occupation soldiers,” with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemning the Israeli action as “barbaric.”
Washington called it a “tragic” event and has pressed its close ally Israel to investigate.
But her family has demanded an independent probe.
“Given the circumstances of Aysenur’s killing, an Israeli investigation is not adequate,” her family said.
Her family said Eygi always advocated “an end to the violence against the people of Palestine.”
Israeli settlements in the West Bank — where about 490,000 people live — are illegal under international law.
Since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel which triggered the war in Gaza, Israeli troops or settlers have killed more than 690 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
At least 23 Israelis, including security forces, have been killed in Palestinian attacks during the same period, according to Israeli officials.
Family demands probe into Israeli military killing of US-Turkish citizen
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Family demands probe into Israeli military killing of US-Turkish citizen
- Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, was “shot in the head” while participating in a demonstration in Beita in the West Bank
- Washington called it a “tragic” event and has pressed its close ally Israel to investigate
Iran president denies providing hypersonic missiles to Yemen’s Houthis
TEHRAN: Tehran has not sent hypersonic missiles to Yemen’s Houthis, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said in a televised news conference on Monday, a day after the Iran-backed group said a missile it fired at Israel was a hypersonic one.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would inflict a “heavy price” on the Houthis who control northern Yemen, after they reached central Israel with a missile on Sunday for the first time.
“It takes a person a week to travel to Yemen (from Iran), how could this missile have gotten there? We don’t have such missiles to provide to Yemen,” Pezeshkian said.
However, last year Iran presented what it described as Tehran’s first domestically made hypersonic ballistic missile, with state media publishing pictures of the missile named “Fattah” at a ceremony.
Israeli minister says time running out for diplomatic solution with Hezbollah in Lebanon
- “The possibility for an agreed framework in the northern arena is running out,” Gallant told Austin in a phone call
- As long as Hezbollah continued to tie itself to the Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza, where Israeli forces have been engaged for almost a year, “the trajectory is clear,” he said
JERUSALEM: Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Monday that the window was closing for a diplomatic solution to the standoff with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement in southern Lebanon.
Gallant’s remarks came as the White House Special envoy Amos Hochstein visited Israel to discuss the crisis on the northern border where Israeli troops have been exchanging missile fire with Hezbollah forces for months.
“The possibility for an agreed framework in the northern arena is running out,” Gallant told Austin in a phone call, according to a statement from his office.
As long as Hezbollah continued to tie itself to the Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza, where Israeli forces have been engaged for almost a year, “the trajectory is clear,” he said.
The visit by Hochstein, who is due to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, comes amid efforts to find a diplomatic path out of the crisis, which has forced tens of thousands on both sides of the border to leave their homes.
On Monday, Israeli media reported that the head of the army’s northern command had recommended a rapid border operation to create a buffer zone in southern Lebanon.
While the war in Gaza has been Israel’s main focus since the attack by Hamas-led gunmen on Oct. 7 last year, the precarious situation in the north has fueled fears of a regional conflict that could drag in the United States and Iran.
A missile barrage by Hezbollah the day after Oct. 7 opened the latest phase of conflict and since then there have been daily exchanges of rockets, artillery fire and missiles, with Israeli jets striking deep into Lebanese territory.
Hezbollah has said it does not seek a wider war at present but would fight if Israel launched one.
Israeli officials have said for months that Israel cannot accept the clearance of its northern border areas indefinitely but while troops remain committed to Gaza, there have also been questions about the military’s readiness for an invasion of southern Lebanon.
However, some of the hard-line members of the Israeli government have been pressing for action and on Monday, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a longtime foe of Gallant, called for him to be sacked.
“We need a decision in the north and Gallant is not the right person to lead it,” he said in a statement on the social media platform X.
Hundreds of Hezbollah fighters and dozens of Israeli soldiers and civilians have been killed in the exchanges of fire, which have left communities on both sides of the border as virtual ghost towns.
The two sides came close to all-out war last month after Israeli forces killed a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut in retaliation for a missile strike that killed 12 youngsters in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
On Monday, Israel’s defense ministry said it had approved the distribution of 9,000 automatic rifles to civilian rapid response units in northern Israel and the Golan Heights.
UNRWA chief: Gaza polio vaccination coverage has reached 90 percent
- More than 446,000 Palestinian children in central and south Gaza were vaccinated
GAZA: Polio vaccination coverage in Gaza has reached 90 percent, the head of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency said on Monday, adding that the next step was to ensure hundreds of thousands of children got a second dose at the end of the month.
The campaign to vaccinate some 640,000 children in Gaza under 10 years of age against polio, which began on Sept. 1, presented major challenges to UNRWA and its partners due to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.
It followed confirmation by the World Health Organization (WHO) last month that a baby had been partially paralyzed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in the Palestinian territory in 25 years.
More than 446,000 Palestinian children in central and south Gaza were vaccinated earlier this month before a campaign to vaccinate a final 200,000 children in north Gaza began on September 10 despite access restrictions, evacuation orders and shortages of fuel.
The first round of the polio vaccination campaign in Gaza ended successfully, UNRWA’s chief Philippe Lazzarini said, adding that 90 percent of the enclave’s children had received a first dose.
“Parties to the conflict have largely respected the different required “humanitarian pauses” showing that when there is a political will, assistance can be provided without disruption. Our next challenge is to provide children with their second dose at the end of September,” he wrote on X.
Israel began its military campaign in Gaza on Oct. 7 last year after Hamas led a shock incursion into southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
The resulting assault on Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to the enclave’s health ministry, and reduced much of the territory to rubble.
Moroccan authorities stop migration attempt into Spanish enclave of Ceuta
- Some attempted to breach a border fence that has long been a flashpoint for sporadic migration tensions, the Spanish Interior Ministry said
- Moroccan authorities also arrested 60 people suspected of inciting a mass migration attempt on social networks
RABAT: Moroccan security forces stopped groups of people who sought to force their way across the border into Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta following a call on social networks for a mass migration attempt, authorities said.
Some attempted to breach a border fence that has long been a flashpoint for sporadic migration tensions, but none successfully made it into Spain, the Spanish Interior Ministry said Monday. It said Spanish and Moroccan security efforts over recent days ″allowed the situation to be brought under control.”
Online messages in recent days had called for people to head for Ceuta on Sunday to cross the border into Europe. Videos posted by local networks showed groups of people in the hills around the Moroccan border town of Fnideq, and a heightened Moroccan security presence, including helicopters.
Moroccan authorities also arrested 60 people suspected of inciting a mass migration attempt on social networks, Moroccan intelligence agency DGSN said in a Facebook post.
Ceuta and Melilla — two tiny Spanish territories in North Africa bordering the Mediterranean — have long been targeted by migrants and refugees seeking better lives in Europe. Many attempt to climb over barbed wire fences encircling the autonomous cities or reaching the exclaves by sea.
Nationwide, Moroccan security forces stopped more than 45,000 migration attempts from January to early September, according to the Moroccan Interior Ministry. In August alone, more than 11,000 migration attempts were prevented in the region around Ceuta and another 3,000 in the area around Melilla, it said in a statement.
Last month, thousands of migrants attempted to cross into Ceuta, including hundreds of young people who tried to swim their way around controls, according to Spanish authorities.
Jailed Iranian Nobel laureate urges action against ‘oppression’ of women
PARIS: Jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi on Monday urged the international community to act to end the “oppression” of women in Iran, two years after the start of a women-led protest movement.
“I call on international institutions and people around the world... to take active action. I urge the United Nations to end its silence and inaction in the face of the devastating oppression and discrimination by theocratic and authoritarian governments against women by criminalizing gender apartheid,” she said in a letter written in Tehran’s Evin prison on Saturday and published by her foundation on Monday.
