GAZA CITY, October 13 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Five Palestinians were killed Sunday, October 13, including a toddler crushed when Israeli forces dynamited a house in the Gaza Strip.

The latest killing of a child in the town of Rafah on the Egyptian border, where at least five youths were killed in Israeli raids last week, will put extra pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon when he heads Monday for Washington, which called for restraint in Israel's increasingly frequent raids into the territory, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

Four-year-old Tawfiq Bereka was killed by falling masonry as Israeli soldiers dynamited a nearby house with a charge so strong it destroyed his house and the one next door in Rafah, a battered border town that has been rocked by frequent raids.

Another 25 people were injured in the blast, set off by Israeli forces allegedly searching for tunnels used to smuggle weapons under the Israeli-controlled border from Egypt.

"Troops discovered tunnels for smuggling weapons connected to two abandoned buildings which were all detonated in a controlled explosion," an army spokesman claimed.

55 buildings were severely damaged by the blast, adding that the injured included the dead boy's baby sister and his grandfather, as well as two pregnant women, Palestinian officials said.

Earlier Sunday, another Palestinian was shot dead and four wounded as the Israeli forces invaded Rafah.

Later in the day, two Palestinians, trying to break into Israel through the Egyptian border, were killed by Israeli occupation forces near a village in the Negev desert. Two Israeli soldiers were slightly hurt.

Bags and weapons were found near their bodies, Israeli army radio claimed.

And near the northern West Bank town of Jenin, a Palestinian woman was shot dead and two girls injured when an Israeli tank opened fire with a heavy machine-gun on their taxi, Palestinian medics said.

Sharon was to head Monday to Washington for a meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush, who has pressed Israel to tone down its hard line in the territories to avoid sparking Arab ire and hampering U.S. plans for their plans to attack Iraq.

Israeli army radio said Sunday the U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Kurtzer passed on a message to Sharon criticizing the former general for refusing to relieve conditions in the territories and stem the killing of civilians.

Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat said the latest raids in Rafah "show that the Israelis don't care about human lives. This incursion is a message that the Israeli government is preparing for a full reoccupation of the Gaza Strip."

Meanwhile in Bethlehem, a member of Fatah, the mainstream movement of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, was killed in an explosion Sunday evening, Palestinian security sources said, blaming the Israeli army.

Leaflets circulated by Fatah activists charged that the killing of 25-year-old Mohammed Hussein Abayat broke an August understanding under which Israel withdrew from the southern West Bank town in return for security guarantees.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer said earlier in the day that he wished to extend the understanding with an army pullback from the flashpoint city of al-Khalil (Hebron).

In Ramallah, the Israeli army on Sunday abducted a senior official of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Khaled Bakir, after surrounding his house with a large number of military vehicles, Palestinian officials said.

Bakir, a member of the leftist party's politburo, was detained together with another unidentified PFLP member, the security officials said.