GAZA CITY, March 16: An Israeli army bulldozer on Sunday crushed to death a US peace activist trying to prevent house demolitions in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli fire also killed two Palestinians in separate incidents.

The killings occurred as Israel sealed off the Palestinian territories amid fears of a Palestinian attack during the Jewish spring festival of Purim and as a US-led war against Iraq loomed.

Peace activist Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old woman from Washington DC, died when a military bulldozer her ran over in the town of Rafah, said Rafah hospital’s chief doctor Ali Mussa and another US activist who witnessed the incident.

“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 peace activists from the International Solidarity Movement were blocking the paths of two bulldozers and an Israeli tank tearing down Palestinian buildings in Rafah, which sits on the Gaza Strip’s Israeli-controlled border with Egypt.—AFP