Briton: How we fled Ramallah

A housewife from Surrey told today how she escaped from the besieged Palestinian town of Ramallah under the nose of a rooftop sniper, in an operation organised by the British Embassy.

Rudy Al-Fekaiki, 37, was among a group of four, including two other Britons and a French woman, who were smuggled out of the devastated town in a Red Cross ambulance.

As Israeli troops tightened their stranglehold on the West Bank town, the four were trapped in a house close to Yasser Arafat's besieged compound. The three Britons are all of Arab origin and three of the four are students at Sussex University.

Mother-of-two Mrs Al-Fekaiki, from Cobham, said: "The British Embassy called us and said 'If you want to take the risk, we can arrange to get an ambulance to take you to the border'. We jumped at the chance even though we were putting our lives in their hands. We had been trying to get out and had been in regular contact with the embassy.

"They gave a note to the Red Cross that British people were coming out and the ambulance picked us up and drove us for 15 minutes and dropped us near the border with Jerusalem. They couldn't take us all the way to the border in case they were shot."

Speaking by phone from a Jerusalem hotel, where she is recovering from the ordeal, Mrs Al-Fekaiki said they had been scared to move because the area where they were hiding was controlled by a sniper on a roof and there were bodies lying in the street.

The other three who fled to safety with her at around 6pm on Tuesday were Sussex students Ramy Aly, 24, from Hounslow, Osama Muttawa, 25, from Brighton, and French national Anais Lafite, 22, from Bordeaux.

They were part of a group of several hundred Europeans travelling under the banner of Grassroots International Protection for the Palestinian People who went to the West Bank a week ago to protest against Israeli attacks on civilians.