The bodies of Samaya Moussa Abda (64) and her son Khalid Yakoub Isa Abda (37) were locked as if in a final embrace, sprawled against a bloody sofa on the floor of their little shop in Bethlehem's old quarter, write Peter Beaumont, in Bethlehem and Michael Jansen, in Jerusalem.
The Israeli soldiers who came to their door on Monday had been shouting through the metal door for Samaya and Khalid to open up.
When they refused, the soldiers fired 18 bullets through the door, cutting down Samaya and her son, who had collapsed and died in the gloomy ground floor room.
Yesterday, as a tense stand-off continued in the nearby Manger Square, site of the Church of the Nativity built on the reputed birthplace of Jesus, a few hundred metres from the Abdas' little house Israeli soldiers continued to move through the streets from door to door.
We came across two columns of them, retreating ahead of us in the direction of Manger Square, firing shots into the doors that they had already blasted from their hinges as they went.
On every corner and every block the soldiers had smashed the water pipes and mains, destroyed cars and ripped up electricity cables.
Elsewhere we found other remnants of the continuing fighting: an armoured panel, ripped from an armoured personnel carrier that had run into a wall. Elsewhere, the drifts of spent shell casings from the Israeli soldiers' weapons.
We halted when the Israeli soldiers called to us to come no nearer to the square, where some 200 Palestinian armed militants were holed up in the Church of the Nativity.
Among those trapped inside the church, the Vatican confirmed yesterday, are 40 Franciscan monks and nuns, as well as 30 Greek Orthodox and Armenian monks.
Ms Mary Kelly, a nurse from Baltimore, West Cork, was among a group of volunteers who tried and failed to reach the church to treat 30 wounded. She is a friend of Ms Caoimhe Butterly, also from West Cork, who has been inside Mr Arafat's headquarters since last Friday night.
"I was moved to come out to support the Palestinian people," Ms Kelly asserted. "We are hoping the international community will halt this brutal aggression. Two ambulances have been crushed by Israeli tanks. The Holy Family Hospital is riddled with bullets, which also destroyed the statue of the Virgin on the roof of the church nearby. There are women inside giving birth, and 30 terrified children."
The aim is to get an ambulance manned by a doctor and a medic to the church to treat less serious cases and evacuate those who need hospital care. The Red Cross has not been able to get through.
(Guardian Service)