And the foreign death toll mounts in Palestine....

A 21-year-old Briton was pronounced clinically dead after being hit in the head and critically wounded by Israeli sniper fire in Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, eyewitnesses and Palestinian medical sources told AFP.

Thomas Hurndall was volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a group of pro-Palestinian activists who engage in non-violent action to protect civilians in the West Bank and Gaza, they said.

A colleague who witnessed the incident said he was trying to pull two children out of danger with a group of other foreign activists and Palestinian civilians when shots were fired from an army watchtower some 100 metres away.

[....]

It was the third such incident in the past four weeks in which a foreign peace activist was injured or killed during Israeli military operations.

Last Saturday, two foreign ISM activists were wounded by Israeli gunfire, one of them seriously, during clashes between Palestinian stone-throwers and Israeli soldiers in the northern West Bank city of Jenin.

A 24-year-old American, Barry Avery, suffered a serious gunshot wound to the face, while a Danish man, Lasse Schmidt, 35, was wounded in the leg by shrapnel, medics said.

And last month, Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old US national also volunteering with the ISM, was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah as she was trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian house.

The Israeli army said it was an "accident" and has yet to reveal the result of its investigation into her death.
Full story.

And I'm sure it's a priority of the Bush administration to get to the bottom of her death....

Why the media and government hoopla over the rescue of Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch--who, presumably following heartfelt convictions put herself in harm's way and, fortunately, came out alive--and so little coverage of Corrie's brutal murder by bulldozer? To the point that most Americans draw a blank stare at the mere mention of her name?

Of course, it's a rhetorical question.