Word: compounded
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...first, those inside lived off stores of food kept by the monks and nuns in residence at the church compound. Just one meal a day was served, at about 2 p.m. One of the civilians appointed himself cook. He had few ingredients to work with: rice, pasta and lentils. When Israeli soldiers brought in additional food for the clerics, they shared it with everyone inside. "They ate what we ate," Salah says, "and in equal portions." Eventually, the monks began stripping the leaves from lemon trees in the courtyard. "We'd make soup out of that, with salt," says Salah...
News from outside came in wafts, mainly over cell phones. The Israelis cut off the power in the main church, but the monks' rooms in adjoining dormitories sometimes had electricity, and the phones were charged there. The only toilets were on the second floor of the compound; they were soon foul because they couldn't be flushed once the Israelis cut off the water. "To get to the bathroom, we had to run though an open space within sight of the snipers," Salah says. "Sometimes they shot at us. So we only went once a day." The only water...
...quarry together, they could pick off the gunmen one by one. Outside the church, they set up a 300-ft.-tall crane and floated a blimp attached to a high-tension cable, mounting surveillance cameras on each. A team of intelligence officers kept track of movements in the church compound and relayed the information to snipers from the Special Police Unit, an elite squad that has the best marksmen in the Israeli services. The intelligence officers communicated with the snipers by using an aerial photo divided into tiny sectors; that made it easier to describe where a Palestinian had been...
...when a similar siege at Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah finally ended, the men in the church were certain they would be liberated next. They began to fire into the night air. The Israelis, thinking the shots were aimed at them, launched flares to illuminate the area. The flares, as they came down, set fire to some rooms in the Franciscan area of the complex. An officer of the National Security Force, Khaled Siyam, 25, rushed to put out the fire; a sniper's bullet killed him instantly. Disgusted by the carelessness of his comrades who fired...
...Meanwhile, on the barracks grounds, parents were getting their children ready for school, wrapping chapatis, polishing shoes and knotting ties. The three men strolled into the compound and started shooting and lobbing hand grenades. They trotted from house to house, murdering mothers and their children. Indian troops arrived within minutes but it would take over three hours to hunt the terrorists down. By the time the army had finished the intruders off, 23 people were dead, including 11 children...