A Mother's Warning, and a Fatal Shot

RAMALLAH, West Bank, April 11 -- The Palestinian most recently killed by Israeli soldiers in Ramallah was Manal Sofran. She was a housewife shot in the head on Wednesday, neighbors said, while calling her husband Sami and their four children to come in from the garden of their three-story apartment building near Chicken Street.

She leaned out from the glass-enclosed sunroom, a common feature of Palestinian houses from the 1950s and '60s. She spied five soldiers by a nearby wall, the neighbors recalled, and feared they might shoot at moving objects.

"She was right," said Tom Kay, one of the neighbors. "But she was the object, and it was clear the soldiers could see her."

Her last words were "Oh, Sami," said grieving relatives who received visitors at a wake today.