In chaotic Bethlehem, the dead share space with the wounded

BETHLEHEM This ancient town, revered by Christians as the birthplace of Jesus, on Wednesday was a scene of destruction and death.

In the wake of the Israeli Army's predawn Tuesday invasion, demolished cars lined the narrow hillside streets, shops had their shutters ripped away, and the dead shared space with the wounded as a military clampdown kept frightened residents locked in their homes.

In one small house, in Bethlehem's Old City, a woman named Fatheyeh Mousa was wailing at foreign reporters for help in getting a dead man's body removed from her kitchen. She did not know the man - he was from a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, he told her. He was wounded during the early hours of the Israeli incursion, and the woman's family had taken him in and provided shelter.

Since no ambulances were allowed on the streets, he died on a thin mat on her kitchen floor. "He kept bleeding," the woman cried, as a child of about 4 stood transfixed by the feet of the corpse in the kitchen. "We tried to find any kind of medicine to help him, but he had a hole in his waist. We didn't know who he was, but we feel like he was family already. I feel like I lost a member of my family."

The man, who told the family his name was Abdel Khader Abu Ahmad, died from his wounds just a few hours before the reporters arrived at the house.