An unidentified Palestinian woman gestures to an Israeli border police officer as her son, inside the vehicle, is taken away in the West Bank town

GAZA CITY, March 17 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Israeli troops killed nine Palestinians, including a toddler and a 13-year-old boy, in raids on the Gaza Strip launched just hours before the Palestinian parliament was to meet to debate a revised bill defining the mandate of a new power-sharing prime minister.

The deadly new raids came after an army bulldozer crushed to death a U.S. peace activist trying to prevent almost daily house demolitions in Rafah, a town on the Israeli-controlled border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.

Some 30 armored vehicles with bulldozers and infantry forces probed several hundred meters (yards) into the Nusseirat refugee camp near Gaza City. The raid was launched from the Netzarim Jewish settlement, three kilometers (two miles) to the north, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).            

The Israeli units backed up by helicopter gunships met with stiff resistance from Palestinian fighters in the camp, Palestinian security officials said.

The slain baby was identified as Hannan El Assar, who was killed by a bullet wound to the head, medics said.

Two other people were crushed under the rubble of a house dynamited by the army as it raided the Nusseirat refugee camp, just south of Gaza City.

It was feared more dead could be under the rubble of the El Saatin family house, security officials said, without naming the person killed, AFP reported.

The overnight raid also cost the lives of four other Palestinians, one of them aged 13, while 17 were wounded. The dead were named as Fadi Darwish, 13, who was at home, Ibrahim Osmani, 22, and Omar Youssef, 17.

Three of the wounded were listed as very serious after being shot in the head.

Several hours later, two more Palestinian men in their twenties were killed when shooting erupted during an Israeli raid into the town of Beit Lahia, on the northern edge of Gaza City.

Palestinian officials said the two men killed were not armed.

The two men were identified as Shadi Ekhrase and Ramez al-Esdudi, both in their early twenties. They were killed in firing that erupted as Israeli forces ordered residents of the Al-Atatra neighborhood to gather in a school in the area.

The previous day two other Palestinians had been shot dead by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip and an American pacifist died when she was crushed by an Israeli army bulldozer while trying to prevent the destruction of homes.

“Regrettable Accident”

The United States, which earlier this month expressed concern over the mounting civilian death toll from the Israeli raids on Gaza, demanded a full and immediate Israeli investigation into the young American woman's death, which the army termed a “regrettable accident”.

Shortly after crushing 23-year-old Rachel Corey to death in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, the army shot dead two Palestinians in separate incidents, a 43-year-old man in Rafah and an 18-year-old man in Khan Yunis just to the north.

Fellow U.S. peace activist Joseph Smith said Corey was killed as a group of pacifists tried to block the work of huge army bulldozers which regularly tear down Palestinian homes near the Israeli-controlled border with Egypt.

"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 AFP.

"He absolutely knew she was there," added Smith, a 20-year-old student from Missouri.

The Israeli army claimed that the death was an accident.  "Apparently the army bulldozer accidentally hit the young woman who got too close despite the army's orders to move away," a spokesperson said in a statement.

The spokesperson said the driver of the bullet-proof bulldozer had limited visibility because of the vehicle's small windows "and he couldn't have seen the young woman".

The driver has not been arrested, another Israeli military spokesman told AFP, adding that an investigation was still underway.

Israel occupation forces make frequent incursions from their border positions into Rafah, a sprawling autonomous town with a large refugee population.

Tanks and bulldozers are sent to destroy houses, an act severely criticized by human rights organizations around the world.

The U.S. State Department declined to condemn what it called the "tragic" incident but said it had made clear to Israel that it expected a thorough probe, reported AFP.

"We have been in contact with the Israeli government and have called on the government of Israel and the Israeli Defense Forces to conduct an immediate and full investigation into the circumstances of this death," said Louis Fintor, a department spokesman.