GAZA CITY, March 17: Israeli troops killed 10 Palestinians, including a toddler and a 13-year-old boy, in raids on the Gaza Strip on Monday, while two Palestinian militants were killed in a blast blamed on the Jewish state in the West Bank.

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

The first raid targeted the Nusseirat refugee camp just south of Gaza City, where the Hamas enjoys strong support.

Some 30 armoured vehicles with bulldozers and infantry advanced several hundred metres into the camp from the nearby Netzarim Jewish settlement.

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

The slain toddler was identified as Elham El Assar, aged three, who was killed by a bullet wound to the head, medics said.

Two other people, including a member of the Islamic Jihad, were crushed to death under the rubble of a house dynamited by the army.

The raid also cost the lives of four other Palestinians, one of them aged 13, while 17 were wounded.

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

Several hours later, three 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 at least two of them were not armed.

Israeli troop also rounded up all men aged between 15 and 50 in the grounds of a school and interrogated them, Palestinian officials said.

Many Palestinian officials fear Israel will use the looming US-led attack on Iraq as cover to increase its attacks on Gaza, a stronghold of hardline militants which has been frequently targeted in recent weeks, but unlike the West Bank has not been reoccupied.

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

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”.

Hours after the deadly Gaza raids, Palestinian militants fired two home-made rockets from northern Gaza into southern Israel, slightly damaging an empty bus that was parked in the town of Sderot. There were no injuries, Israeli security officials said.

Hamas militants have fired dozens of the crude Qassam rockets which cause little damage but provoke Israeli incursions into Gaza, raids so bloody that the Palestinian Authority has tried to prevent further rocket fire. —AFP