MIDDLE EAST: After more than 16 months of almost daily bloodshed, it marked yet another grim first: Miri Ohana (45) and her 11-year-old handicapped daughter Yael were laid to rest yesterday, having become the first Israeli Intifada victims to be murdered in their home.
Out of the darkness at their house in the Jordan Valley settlement of Hamra on Wednesday night, a man in Israeli army uniform had knocked on their door, and Miri opened it.
He was a Palestinian gunman who had already shot dead a soldier when, after breaking through the settlement's electronic fence, he had come under fire from a patrol vehicle.
Five more soldiers fired at him, and missed. Then he saw the lights burning at the Ohana home, knocked, entered, and shot mother and daughter dead. All the other families had locked their doors, closed their windows and shut off the lights when the gunfire started; neighbours say Miri Ohana may have wanted to avoid frightening Yael by doing likewise.
"They opened the door because he was dressed as a soldier," said Mr Yitzhak Orenstein, a security officer at the settlement who was himself out on patrol and came under fire. "He first shot the little girl, Yael," said Mr Orenstein, "because she just came out of the shower and screamed 'Mommy, Mommy'. And then he shot Miri." And then, finally, Israeli soldiers shot the gunman dead, hitting him through a window of the house.
Mr Haviv Ohana, Miri's husband, had been out shopping, and was on his way home when the attack occurred. "What did my daughter ever do to them? Why did she deserve this?" he asked the journalists as he reached the settlement, unaware at the time that his wife was dead too.
Yesterday at Hamra, a settlement of just 35 families near the border between the West Bank and Jordan, dozens of locals gathered to ask the area's army commander, Gen Yitzhak Eitan, what had gone wrong.
The general had few answers. After all, there had been plenty of intelligence warnings that such attacks were being planned by Hamas and by the military wing of Mr Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO - both of which have issued claims of responsibility for the killings. Indeed, a specific warning of an attack was issued to all Jordan Valley settlement at 7 p.m. on Wednesday. The gunman arrived at 8 p.m.
In response to the attack, Israel fired two missiles at the Palestinian Authority headquarters building in Nablus late on Wednesday.
Amid what Palestinian officials said were rumours of a further Israeli air strike, the Authority then released more than 20 Hamas and Islamic Jihad detainees from the nearby Nablus jail.
To the north, in Jenin, armed Palestinians marched on the jail, and forced the release of another six Hamas and Islamic Jihad detainees.
Israel has publicly blamed Mr Arafat for failing to thwart attacks like Wednesday's. At the White House last night, Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, was asking President George Bush to do what he has himself been doing for the past two months: sever all contacts with Mr Arafat and try to encourage the emergence of a more moderate Palestinian leadership from among Mr Arafat's associates.