Israeli troops killed at least seven Palestinians, including a baby and a 13-year-old boy, in a Gaza raid launched just hours after an Israeli army bulldozer crushed to death a US peace activist in the volatile Palestinian territory.
Some 30 armored vehicles with bulldozers and infantry forces probed several hundred metres into the Nusseirat refugee camp near Gaza City. The raid was launched from the Netzarim Jewish settlement, three kilometres to the north.
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.
The overnight raid also cost the lives of four other Palestinians, while 15 were wounded.
Three Palestinians were also killed by the Israeli army in the northern Gaza Strip town of BeitLahia, Palestinian medical sources said.The three men in their twenties were killed as the army launched a major incursion into the town.Elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian youth in Khan Younis and a 43-year-old Palestinian in Rafah, Palestinian sources said.
The latest deaths bring to 3,098 the number of people killed since the intifada or uprising started in late September 2000, including 2,323 Palestinians and 717 Israelis.
Yesterday, Israeli forces killed an American woman and two Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in a fresh blow to US hopes of calming Israeli-Palestinian violence ahead of a possible war with Iraq.
Twenty-three-year-old Rachel Corey was, according to a witness, lying on the ground in front of an Israeli army bulldozer demolishing a house in the southern Gaza city of Rafah when she was killed.
"The American girl was lying in front of the bulldozer when the bulldozer took sand and put it over her," Ali al-Shaar, a witness to the incident, said.
The Israeli army called the incident a "regrettable accident," but said Ms Corey and other protesters had been acting irresponsibly by "intentionally placing themselves in a combat zone." The army said it was investigating the incident.
A military official said there was limited visibility, especially on the ground immediately in front of the vehicle, from the windows of the armored bulldozers used by the army.
The latest bloodshed came despite a stepped up initiative from the United States to unveil a long delayed peace "roadmap" intended to end the violence and establish the groundwork for a Palestinian state.
The Palestinian parliament was due to vote today on a third and final reading of a bill to establish the post of Prime Minister. The bill needs President Yasser Arafat's approval to be come law.
It was not yet clear whether the new Palestinian prime minister would have the power and standing to wield "real authority" as the United States has demanded.
But Mr Blair said at a news conferences at the Azores that the candidate for the job, leading Palestinian moderate Mahmoud Abbas, who is widely known as Abu Mazen, would fit the bill.