SOUAD ABED RABBO was in her apartment on the edge of the Jabalya refugee camp near the Israeli border on January 7 when the call came from Israeli soldiers for everyone in the area to come outside.

Her apartment had been bombed, and there was an Israeli tank unit approaching the building.

"We started coming outside of the apartment, and we were waving white flags to show that we were not fighters," she said through a translator yesterday.

Among the first to exit the building were one of her sons, Khaled, and his wife and three daughters, Amal, 2, Sammer, 4, and Souad, 7.

Two soldiers were standing on either side of the tank outside the house, she said. Another of her sons, Husam, told the Herald that one of the soldiers was an officer.