GAZA, Feb 5: The stepmother of a Palestinian militant was crushed to death on Wednesday when Israeli forces razed their home in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials said.

They said she had apparently not heard warnings to leave the building.

In the West Bank, troops killed two Palestinians in separate incidents.

Witnesses said a Palestinian policeman was shot as he and others fled their base in Qalqilya during a military raid. Israeli military sources said he had ignored orders to halt.

In Nablus, a Palestinian youth was shot dead by troops during a stone-throwing clash, witnesses said. An Israeli military source said the youth was armed and had shot at troops in the area.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s tough line on a 28-month-old Palestinian uprising for independence helped his right-wing Likud party to a resounding win in polls last month. Likud is still wrangling with potential coalition partners.

In Gaza’s al-Maghazi refugee camp, army sappers blew up the family home of Baha Saeed, a militant from Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction who killed two Israelis in an attack on the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom shortly after the Palestinian uprising began in September 2000.

Saeed was shot dead during that assault.

Palestinian security sources and medical officials said Kamla Saeed, Saeed’s elderly stepmother, was found dead in the debris of the home.

“She was partly deaf and apparently she was not aware of what was happening,” said Khaled Saeed, one of Kamla’s stepsons.

“Israeli troops were acting in a brutal way, they got us all out of the house so fast and in an aggressive manner, they gave no chance for us to see who was out and who was in,” he said, adding that three of his brothers were detained by troops.—Reuters