GAZA, 6 February 2003 — Israeli forces razed the home of a Palestinian in the Gaza Strip yesterday and his stepmother was crushed to death inside. In the West Bank, troops killed a Palestinian policeman in a raid on his base in Qalqilya and in Nablus, Samer Zurba, 18, died after being shot in the neck when Israeli forces opened fire on teenagers throwing stones at a patrol of jeeps as the army carried out searches.

In another operation that threatened to inflame religious passions, Israeli authorities demolished a mosque built without planning permission in a Bedouin village in the Negev Desert, an Arab Israeli MP said.

Talab Al-Sani of the United Arab List said Interior Ministry bulldozers razed the mosque at 4:00 a.m. in the village of Tel El-Maleh in southern Israel that is home to around 1,000 people.

“The Israeli government has crossed the red line in the racist campaign that (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon is waging against our villages,” he said. He said the mosque had cost $100,000 to build. After the bulldozers left, villagers immediately started rebuilding it using material donated by businessmen, he said.

In the central Gaza Strip, 65-year-old Kamla Abu Said was hit in the head by a chunk of stone as army sappers blew up the house of her husband’s late son by another woman in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp, Palestinian medical and security sources said.

Her body was found several hours later. Relatives said the woman was deaf and had not heard Israeli soldiers’ orders to people in adjacent houses to leave their homes during the blast.

The demolition occurred during a raid lasting several hours overnight by around a dozen Israeli armored vehicles protected by two helicopters into the refugee camp.

During the raid into the central Gaza camp, the helicopter gunships opened fire as sappers destroyed the house of Baher Abu Said, a member of the Fatah movement.

Policeman Reda Ghanen, 20, was killed as he was leaving a police station that had been surrounded by Israeli soldiers during an incursion into Qalqilya in the northern West Bank, close to the border with Israel. A second policeman was wounded in the shooting.

In the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis, 13 Palestinians were wounded, including three women and three children, when Israeli tanks in the neighboring Gush Katif Jewish settlement bloc opened fire on the town.

The latest deaths took the number of Palestinians killed since the start of the intifada to 2,178. (Agencies)