CNN
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An American activist has been shot and killed during a protest near Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to Palestinian officials.
The activist was shot during a weekly demonstration against an Israeli settlement near the Palestinian village of Beita, according to a resident.
Eyewitnesses and Palestinian officials said that the Israeli military was responsible. CNN has asked the Israel Defense Forces for comment on the accusation.
Dr. Hisham Dweikat, a resident of Beita, took part in the demonstration.
“Just as the prayers were finishing, the Israeli military started firing tear gas and stun grenades towards the protestors,” he said. “As people were running away, live fire was shot and a soldier fired directly at the protestors, hitting the American activist in the head from behind and falling to the ground.”
The activist was brought to Rafidia hospital in Nablus, where she was pronounced dead, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA.
Protests at Beita are common. The Palestinian town is next to a ramshackle Israeli settler outpost known as Evyatar. The settlement was unauthorized by the Israeli state until it was legalized earlier this year. All Israeli settlements are considered illegal under international law.
“We say to the international community, this woman held American citizenship,” the governor of Nablus, Ghassan Daghlas, told journalists at Rafidia hospital. “But the bullets did not differentiate between a Palestinian, a child, an old man, or a woman, and between one nationality and another.”
The activist’s death comes nine days after Israel’s military launched one of its most expansive operations in the West Bank in years, carrying out raids and airstrikes in multiple parts of the occupied territory.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said the operation aimed to “thwart Islamic-Iranian terrorist infrastructure,” claiming that Iran was working to establish an “eastern front” against Israel to work alongside Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
Clashes in the West Bank have become more frequent since Israel began its war in Gaza in response to Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7.
Nearly 700 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah and the UN, whose figures do not distinguish between militants and civilians.
This is a developing story and will be updated.