Israeli strike hits home of Hamas lawmaker in Gaza

GAZA, Oct 11 (Reuters) An Israeli missile hit the Gaza Strip home of a well known woman lawmaker from the governing Islamist group Hamas today in what the army said was an attack on a weapons factory.

Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinians in separate incidents at the border with Gaza and in the occupied West Bank. Residents said the man killed in the raid on the city of Nablus was a civilian. The army said he was planting a bomb.

There were no reports of casualties in the strike in Gaza on the building of Mariam Farhat, better known as Umm Nidal, who has often voiced pride at the death of three of her six sons during a Palestinian uprising.

Residents were warned in advance of the attack. Israel has frequently carried out such strikes on buildings it says are used by militants during a three-month-old Gaza offensive to try to recover a captured soldier and stop cross-border rocket fire.

''There was an air strike on a weapons storage and manufacturing facility,'' an army spokeswoman said.

The building was badly damaged.

Farhat was one of the best known of the Hamas parliamentarians elected in January when the Islamist group dedicated to destroying Israel defeated moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah.

Farhat first won attention for appearing with her 17-year-old son Mohammed in a video recorded before he carried out a shooting attack on a Jewish settlement in 2000 in which he killed five people before being shot dead.

Israel abandoned its Gaza Strip settlements in September 2005, but launched an offensive in the territory in June after the abduction of the soldier in a raid over the border by Palestinian militants, including Hamas's armed wing.

Since then, Israel has also detained dozens of Hamas officials, including ministers and lawmakers, in the West Bank.

Hospital workers and residents in Nablus said a Palestinian was shot in the head at the house where he was staying as he watched clashes between troops and gunmen. The army said it had shot a man planting a bomb.

The army said it shot dead another Palestinian wearing a bomb belt as he tried to cross into Israel from the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian medical officials said they had received a body from Israel, but had not yet confirmed the man's identity.

REUTERS PDM VV1626