Israeli soldiers killed an American woman participating in an anti-settlement protest in the West Bank on Friday, a protester who witnessed the shooting said.
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller confirmed the death of the 26-year-old woman, but did not say whether she was killed by Israeli soldiers.
He said the US was gathering more information about the circumstances of her death and would have "more to say".
Miller and the doctors who helped her released the woman's name, but the activist organization where she volunteers, the International Solidarity Movement, said her family asked that she not be identified.
Israel's military said it was investigating reports that soldiers killed a foreign national while firing on an "instigator of violent activity" in the protest zone.
The woman who was killed attended demonstrations against the expansion of the settlement, protests that had previously turned violent.
A month ago, American citizen Amad Sison was shot in the leg by Israeli forces while trying to escape from tear gas.
Jonathan Polak, an Israeli who also took part in the protest, said the shooting occurred shortly after dozens of Palestinians and international activists held a joint prayer on a hillside outside the northern West Bank town of Beit, which overlooks the Israeli settlement of Eviatar.
The soldiers surrounded the people who were praying and clashes soon broke out, with Palestinians throwing stones and soldiers firing tear gas and live ammunition, Polak said.
Demonstrators and activists, including the Pole and the woman who was injured, retreated from the hill and the clashes subsided, he said.
Then he watched as two soldiers who were standing on the roof of a nearby house pointed a gun in the direction of the group and shot at them. He said the woman was about 10 or 15 meters behind him when the shots were fired.
He then saw her "lying on the ground, next to an olive tree, bleeding to death," he said.
"We tried to save the American citizen, we tried to revive the heart in several stages, but unfortunately, we were unable to restore the function of the heart," said the doctors who came to the scene.
The United Nations said the humanitarian situation in Gaza was "beyond catastrophic," with more than a million Palestinians not receiving any meals in August and the number of people receiving daily cooked meals falling by 35 percent.
Meanwhile, health workers continued to vaccinate children against polio in the southern Gaza Strip on Friday morning, as part of the second phase of a major immunization campaign.
The Bekah Valley, the birthplace of Hezbollah, once again plays an important role in the militant group's conflict with Israel.
"We consider the southern part to be the first line of defense in Lebanon, and we in Bekaa are the second line of defense," said Hassan Al Mousavi, mayor of the Hezbollah-run municipality of Nabi Shit.
Israeli forces withdrew from the occupied city of Jenin in the West Bank, reports the Palestinian news agency Wafa, after a ten-day raid in which, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 21 people were killed.
A Reuters witness said that the Israeli forces left behind significant damage to the infrastructure.
In a statement on Facebook, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry accused Israel of bringing brutal destruction and devastation from the Gaza Strip to the occupied West Bank, particularly in the cities of Jenin and Tulkarem and the refugee camps there.
Israeli raids in other parts of the West Bank continued, Al Jazeera reported, including in the village of Husan, west of Bethlehem, where a 20-year-old woman was injured by shrapnel from Israeli gunfire as she tried to close a window.
Israeli forces also raided the village of Beit Tamar, east of Bethlehem, and the Balata refugee camp, east of Nablus, where a 30-year-old Palestinian was injured by shrapnel, the Guardian reports.
Israeli settlers, backed by soldiers, attacked the Palestinian villages of Hader Kayed Bani Ode and Hader Shahada Bani Ode in the northern Jordan River Valley, Qatari television reported.
The Palestinian health authorities announced that at least 39 Palestinians were killed and 140 injured throughout the occupied West Bank during the ten-day Israeli operation. This is the largest operation in the area since 2002. Most of the dead were armed fighters, but civilians who were not involved in the conflict were also killed, including a sixteen-year-old girl. An Israeli soldier was also killed.
The United States of America (USA) has appealed to Israel and Palestinian Hamas to finalize a cease-fire agreement in the Gaza Strip.
During his visit to Haiti, the head of US diplomacy, Anthony Blinken, confirmed US estimates that 90 percent of the agreement is ready.
"It's really up to both sides to reach an agreement on the remaining issues," he told a news conference.
He warned that delaying the final agreement risks the situation "derailing".
The US, along with Qatar and Egypt, have been conducting mediation efforts for months to persuade the two sides to reach an agreement, nearly 11 months after the start of the Gaza war that was sparked by Hamas' unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7.
(BETA)
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