Biden ‘outraged’ by U.S. activist’s death; Israel kills dozens in Gaza strikes

JERUSALEM - President Joe Biden said he was “outraged and deeply saddened” by the death of Aysenur Eygi, the Turkish American activist whom Israeli forces acknowledged killing in the occupied West Bank, in some of his more forceful comments challenging Israel’s military operations there.

“Israel must do more to ensure that incidents like this never happen again,” read Biden’s statement Wednesday. “The violence in the West Bank has been going on for too long. Violent extremist Israeli settlers are uprooting Palestinians from their homes. Palestinian terrorists are sending car bombs to kill civilians. I will continue to support policies that hold all extremists - Israelis and Palestinians alike - accountable for stoking violence and serving as obstacles to peace.”

Witnesses say Eygi, 26, was fatally shot in the head last week by Israeli soldiers who opened fire while she was participating in a protest of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. In the statement, Biden described Eygi as “an activist whose idealism led her to travel to the West Bank to peacefully protest the expansion of settlements.”

“The shooting that led to her death is totally unacceptable,” he added. The president’s remarks mark a change in tone from his comments Tuesday, when he described her death as an “accident,” while boarding Marine One. “Apparently it was an accident, ricocheted off the ground and just got hit by accident. I’m working that out now,” he said. A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity about the sensitive issue, said that account was part of a more complete briefing of initial Israel Defense Forces findings given to the White House of the incident.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, called the killing “a horrific tragedy” in a statement released Wednesday.

“We will continue to press the government of Israel for answers and for continued access to the findings of the investigation so we can have confidence in the results,” she said. “There must be full accountability.”

Biden’s Wednesday remarks on Eygi’s killing echoed those of top U.S. officials. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking in London on Tuesday, called for “fundamental changes” in the way the Israel Defense Forces operates in the West Bank, including to its “rules of engagement.”

In a post on X, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said he expressed to his Israeli counterpart his “grave concern” over the IDF’s responsibility for Eygi’s “unprovoked and unjustified death.” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, in a briefing at the White House, said that “for an innocent bystander to be killed in a protest” was “very, very deeply concerning.”

On Tuesday, Israel published its initial investigation into Eygi’s death, finding that it was “highly likely” that Eygi was “hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire.” The IDF said forces were not aiming at her but at the “key instigator” of what it called a “violent riot” in the West Bank village of Beita, where demonstrators had thrown rocks at security forces.

Biden appeared to back the IDF’s assessment in Wednesday’s statement, saying Eygi’s death was “the result of a tragic error resulting from an unnecessary escalation,” adding that Washington had been given full access to the preliminary investigation. Eygi’s body is being repatriated to Turkey.

On Tuesday, Eygi’s family released a statement calling the investigation “wholly inadequate.”

“We are deeply offended by the suggestion that her killing by a trained sniper was in any way unintentional. The disregard shown for human life in this story is appalling,” read the statement. “As we mourn the death of our beloved Aysenur, we reiterate our demand for US government leaders - President Biden, Vice President Harris and Secretary of State Blinken - to order an independent investigation into the Israeli military’s deliberate targeting and killing of a US citizen.”

Across central and southern Gaza and in the West Bank, Palestinian authorities said Wednesday that Israeli forces killed dozens of people in a fresh round of airstrikes.

At least 14 Palestinians, including one child, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school in Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, said Mahmoud Bassal, a Gaza civil defense force spokesman. More than 18 people were injured, he said. The al-Jaouni school is run by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that aids Palestinian refugees. The agency did not respond immediately to a request for comment. The IDF said that its air force had conducted a “precise strike” on “terrorists … operating inside a Hamas command and control center” in Nuseirat camp.

A house elsewhere in Nuseirat was also hit in a strike, according to a Gaza civil defense force statement shared on Telegram.

In Khan Younis in southern Gaza, an Israeli airstrike on a family home killed 11 members of an extended family, among them nine women, Bassal said in a statement. In central Gaza, another four were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Nuseirat, Bassal said.

In the Mawasi area of Rafah, a city in Gaza’s south, another four people were killed and another 15 injured in an Israeli airstrike, Bassal said.

The IDF did not respond to a request for comment about the strikes in Gaza.

A medical worker at Gaza’s al-Aqsa Hospital, who spoke with The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity out of safety concerns, said they treated a woman injured in the Nuseirat strike. The strike, they said, tore off her nose and caused the woman to lose her right eye. “The maxillofacial surgeon doesn’t even know what do for her,” they said.

Five people were killed in an Israeli airstrike early Wednesday on Tubas, a village in the West Bank, according to the Palestine Red Crescent. The IDF said it launched an operation in Tubas and Tamun, another village in the West Bank, and said it had hit an armed militant cell. The raids follow recent operations in the area, including a major incursion late last month.

What else to know

A fuel tanker crashed into a bus stop near the West Bank settlement of Giv’at Asaf, Israel’s ambulance service said Wednesday. The IDF described the incident as an “attack,” and said it had killed a militant at the scene. The Post could not independently verify the details.

Harris and Republican nominee Donald Trump both said they wanted a settled end to Israel’s war in Gaza. In Tuesday night’s presidential debate, Harris largely hewed to the Biden administration’s stance, reiterating her support for Israel’s right to self-defense while lamenting the loss of innocent Palestinian lives. Trump claimed that if elected, he would be able to end the conflict during the presidential transition period.

The IDF said it struck about 30 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, in a post on Telegram. Israel and the Iranian-backed militant group have been exchanging fire across Lebanon’s border with Israel since October, raising the specter of a full-blown conflict.

Two Israeli soldiers were killed and seven injured when an Israeli military helicopter crashed in Gaza’s Rafah area, the IDF said Wednesday. The IDF, which is investigating the crash, said that there was no early indication that the crash was caused by enemy fire.

At least 41,020 people have been killed and 94,925 injured in Gaza since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, including more than 300 soldiers, and says 342 soldiers have been killed since the launch of its military operation in Gaza.

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Sands reported from London and Mahfouz from Cairo.