Funeral takes place for American-Turkish activist Israeli military shot in West Bank

The funeral for American-Turkish activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, who was killed by Israeli gunfire in the West Bank last week has started in Didim, a district in Aydın, southwestern Turkey.

The American-Turkish activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, who was killed by Israeli gunfire in the West Bank last week, has been buried in her family’s hometown in southwestern Turkey. The activist’s body arrived in Turkey on Friday in a flat top coffin, wrapped in the Turkish flag and carried by soldiers, in a ceremony that is usually reserved for fallen troops. Her coffin was placed outside Didim Central Mosque on Saturday, where hundreds of people gathered to pay their respects to the 26-year-old. A smaller event later took place at a cemetery where an imam read verses from the Quran and mourners laid white flowers on her grave. Eygi, who was born in Turkey and had joint US citizenship, was shot by Israeli forces while taking part in a weekly protest against an Israeli settlement near the Palestinian village of Beita. All Israeli settlements are considered illegal under international law. She was a recent graduate of the University of Washington, and had been volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), the same pro-Palestinian activist group as Rachel Corrie, a US citizen killed in 2003 while attempting to stop an Israeli bulldozer from demolishing Palestinian homes in Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was “highly likely” that Eygi was “hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire.”