Al Jazeera :
Hundreds of mourners in Turkey have gathered for funeral prayers ahead of the burial of Turkish-American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi who was killed by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank.
The killing last week of 26-year-old Eygi sparked international condemnation against Israel. She was shot in the head while taking part in a demonstration on September 6 against illegal Israeli settlements.
On Saturday, family members, friends and supporters congregated in Eygi’s home town of Didim, in western Turkey.
Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar, reporting from Didim, said that for days, Eygi’s family have been receiving visitors from Turkey, the United States and other parts of the world, as they awaited the arrival of her remains.
“You can see the disbelief in their faces that Aysenur is no more,” Serdar said, adding that tight security measures were in place with top government officials attending her funerak.
Eygi’s coffin was brought to the coastal Aegean town on Saturday following a martyrs’ ceremony at Istanbul airport on Friday.
She was a frequent visitor to Didim, and her family said they wanted her to be buried there, where her grandfather lives and her grandmother has been laid to rest.
“The only thing I ask of our state is to seek justice for my daughter,” she was quoted as saying by Turkish state news agency Anadolu.
‘Deliberately targeted’
“Aysenur’s blood will not be in vain and we will hold accountable those who killed her in international courts,” said Numan Kurtulmus, Turkey’s Parliament Speaker, in Didim on Saturday.
He said the responsibility for the killing “lies with Israel and its supporters”.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised to ensure “that Aysenur Ezgi’s death does not go unpunished”.
US President Joe Biden called for Israel to provide “full accountability” for Eygi’s death.
The Israeli military has said it was likely Eygi was hit “unintentionally” by forces while they were responding to a “violent riot” in Beita, near Nablus.
Among the witnesses to her killing was an Italian activist who rode with Eygi in the ambulance as she was transferred to Beita and then to Nablus, where she was pronounced dead.
“We were clearly visible to the army, there was nothing happening next to us … it was a shoot to kill,” the Italian activist said.