GAZA
CITY, March 16 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - An Israeli army
bulldozer on Sunday crushed to death a US peace activist trying
to prevent house demolitions in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli fire
also killed two Palestinians in separate incidents.
The
killings occurred as Israel sealed off the Palestinian territories in
preparation to the Jewish spring festival of Purim and as a U.S.-led
war against Iraq loomed.
Peace
activist Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old woman from Washington DC,
died when a military bulldozer her ran over in the town of Rafah, said
Rafah hospital's chief doctor Ali Mussa and another U.S. activist who
witnessed the incident.
"She
was sitting in the path of the bulldozer. The bulldozer saw her and
ran over her. She ended up completely underneath it," fellow
activist Joseph Smith told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"He
absolutely knew she was there," added Smith, a 20-year-old
student from Missouri.
The
peace activists from the International Solidarity Movement were
blocking the paths of two bulldozers and an Israeli tank tearing down
Palestinian buildings in the town, which sits on the Gaza Strip's
Israeli-controlled border with Egypt.
Smith
said the group had been active for around an hour, standing on
condemned structures and putting themselves in the pathway of the
bulldozers, one of which had already pushed an activist against a line
of barbed wire.
The
Israeli army had no immediate comment on Corrie's death.
Mussa
said she had died of injuries to her head and legs.
Palestinian
officials said the Israeli bulldozers had destroyed two houses before
the young woman's death.
Shortly
afterwards, Israeli fire killed 43-year-old Palestinian civilian Ahmad
al-Najar, near his home in Rafah, Palestinian officials said.
And
just to the north in Khan Yunis, 18-year-old Palestinian Mohammed
Abdel Hadi was killed and three other people wounded when Israeli
troops in the Gush Katif settlement bloc fired on the town,
Palestinian officials said.
Israel
forces make frequent incursions from their border positions into
Rafah, a sprawling autonomous town with a large refugee population.
Dozens of Palestinians and several Israeli soldiers have been killed
in the sector.
Ten
Palestinians were killed on Friday, March 14, when Israeli
bulldozers and armored vehicles rolled into the West Bank refugee camp
of Jenin.
"Sealed"
 |
|
Corey
is helped in vain at the Rafah hospital in the Southern Gaza Strip
|
In
the meantime, Israeli occupation forces sealed off the Palestinian
areas allegedly to undermine fears of an attack during the Jewish
festival of Purim.
The
Israeli army closed the borders with the West Bank and Gaza Strip for
the Jewish spring carnival, an army statement said.
"No
Palestinian will be authorized to enter Israel following warnings of
attacks during the Jewish festival of Purim," celebrated from
Monday to Wednesday, it said.
A
Palestinian security source said that early Sunday the army had turned
back more than 10,000 workers from the Gaza Strip who were trying to
reach their jobs in Israel.
Israeli
military authorities also banned Palestinian men aged 15 to 35 from
leaving the West Bank and Gaza Strip for an indefinite period, the
Palestinian source said.
Palestinian
Local government minister Saeb Erakat denounced the move as "a
new escalation in Israeli's policy of aggression against the
Palestinian people", adding: "one can expect more repressive
measures in the run-up to a war in Iraq."
Increasingly
deadly Israeli raids in the Gaza Strip earlier this month drew a rare
U.S. rebuke to Israel for the mounting civilian death toll.
Last
Thursday, the Israeli daily Haaretz leaked a government
document revealing that of 1,945 Palestinians killed by the Israeli
army in the uprising against Israeli occupation, 365 were innocent
civilians, including 130 under the age of 16.
In
an editorial on Sunday, Haaretz slammed the army for its use of
force, criticized this month by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw
as "indiscriminate."
Haaretz
said the army, "which brought up generations of soldiers on the
myth of purity of arms and educated its commanders with the idea of
the moral deliberating soldier ... is turning into a killing machine
whose efficiency is awe-inspiring, yet shocking."
