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Israeli bulldozer kills US activist

Rachel Corrie, 23, from Olympia, Washington, uses a loud speaker as she stands in front of an Israeli bulldozer in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah on Sunday. PHOTO: AP

An Israeli army bulldozer crushed an American peace activist to death in the Gaza Strip on Sunday in what witnesses described as a deliberate killing.

Rachel Corrie, 23, died as she attempted to prevent the military destroying homes in the Rafah refugee camp, one of the most dangerous in the occupied territories.

"She was standing on top of a pile of earth," said another activist, Richard Purssell, who was a few meters away.

"The driver cannot have failed to see her. As the blade pushed the pile, the earth rose up. Rachel slid down the pile. It looks as if she got her foot caught. The driver didn't slow down; he just ran over her. Then he reversed the bulldozer back over her again. She was very courageous," Purssell said.

Other activists said the bulldozer had approached from several meters away and that Corrie, who was wearing a brightly colored jacket, was waving and they were shouting at the driver to stop but he ignored them.

Witnesses said another protester had been slightly injured about half an hour earlier when the bulldozer knocked him into barbed wire.

Friends try to save the life of Rachel Corrie after she was run over by an Israeli army bulldozer. PHOTO: AP

Corrie was one of eight foreign volunteers -- four from the US and four from Britain -- with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) seeking to block house demolitions.

Purssell, from Brighton, England, said that earlier an Israeli tank protecting the bulldozer had attempted to drive protesters away with warning shots and teargas. But there had been no trouble immediately before Corrie was crushed.

Doctors at al-Najar hospital said she had died from skull and chest fractures. The Israeli military described the death as a "very regrettable accident."

"We are dealing with a group of protesters who are acting very irresponsibly, putting everyone in danger -- the Palestinians, themselves and our forces -- by intentionally placing themselves in a combat zone," the army said.

"We are checking the details of the incident and believe it to be a very regrettable accident," the army said.

ISM volunteers frequently act as human shields to hinder demolitions, delay the construction of the new "security" wall in the West Bank or to help protect Palestinians harvesting their crops under threat from Jewish settlers.

An ISM spokesman in the US said on Sunday that Corrie was a student in Olympia, Washington.

She is the first foreign peace activist killed in the occupied territories during the past two and a half years of intifada.

Another witness, Mansour Abed Allah, a Palestinian human rights worker in Rafah, said it was ironic that an American should be killed by an US-made bulldozer: "America is providing Israel with tanks and bulldozers, and now they killed one of their own people."

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