MIDDLE EAST: An elderly Palestinian woman was crushed to death yesterday when Israeli troops demolished the home of a militant in a Gaza Strip refugee camp. In the West Bank, troops shot dead a Palestinian policeman and a 17-year-old youth.
Forces surged into the El Muazi camp in central Gaza and destroyed the home of Baha Said, a militant connected to Palestinian Authority President Mr Yasser Arafat's Fatah party, who died during an attack two years ago on an Israeli military position at the isolated Kfar Darom settlement, in which two soldiers were killed.
The military, which has destroyed dozens of homes belonging to Palestinian militants in recent months, calls over loudhalers for people to leave the structures before wrecking them.
But some Palestinians at the scene suggested that Kamla Said, the stepmother of Baha, might not have heeded the calls because she was hard of hearing. Doctors said she died of chest injuries after she had been extracted from the rubble.
"She was partly deaf and apparently she was not aware of what was happening," said Mrt Khaled Said, another of her stepsons.
He accused the troops of "acting in a brutal way", adding that they had detained three of his brothers.
The army said it would investigate Kamla Said's death, although military officials insisted the house had been carefully searched before sappers dynamited it.
Israel's policy of house demolitions has been slammed by the international community as a form of collective punishment, but Israeli leaders insist it has helped to deter militants planning to carry out attacks, including suicide bombings.
In a pre-dawn raid yesterday, Israeli troops killed a 22-year-old member of the Palestinian Authority security services in the West Bank city of Qalqilyah. In Nablus, Palestinians said a 17-year-old youth was shot dead by troops. The army said the youth was shot because he was armed with a rifle; Palestinians said he was only throwing rocks at the soldiers.
In a move that Israeli Arab leaders warned could spark violence, inspectors from Israel's Interior Ministry yesterday demolished a mosque built in the unrecognised Bedouin village of Til al Malah in the southern Negev desert.
Six months ago, residents there invested some $20,000 in building a mosque because they had nowhere to pray. But because the village has never been recognised by the state, none of the structures in Til al Malah have official sanction and so the mosque was declared illegal.