BEIT FAJAR, West Bank — Of Khalil Taqataqah's nine children, 20-year-old Andaleeb was his favorite. She got up early on Friday, made him tea and then slipped unnoticed out of the modest family home in this West Bank village.
In central Jerusalem later in the day, Andaleeb — Arabic for nightingale — blew herself up at a crowded outdoor market, killing herself and six Israelis and injuring scores more. She was the third Palestinian woman to carry out a suicide attack this year.
"I was shocked to hear the news," her father said. "She was the closest of my children to me."
Speaking to The Associated Press in Beit Fajar on Saturday, Andaleeb's parents, her sisters, best friend and close relatives painted a picture of a small, soft-spoken woman who had not given any of them the slightest hint of her intentions.
In a video shown Saturday on the Arab satellite TV channel Al-Jazeera, she wears a sash bearing the words "Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade," a militia linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
"I've chosen to say with my body what Arabs leaders have failed to say," Andaleeb says, reading from a piece of paper. "My body is a barrel of gunpowder that burns the enemy."
Her hair was covered with the traditional checkered Palestinian headgear. In the background was a poster of Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock mosque, one of Islam's holiest shrines.
"She was like any other girl her age," said her best friend and colleague Laila Mahmoud. "She spoke about love and marriage. I am so sad she's gone. It's the shock of my life."
A school dropout, Andaleeb had supported her family with her job at a Palestinian-owned textile factory in the nearby town of Beit Jala. But she had not reported for work for nearly three weeks because of repeated closures of West Bank roads by the Israeli army, according to her relatives.
"Anyone in her place would have snapped. It's her destiny and it's a source of pride and glory for us that she did what she did," said her aunt, Jameela Taqataqah, as she fought back tears.
The family's two-room house in Beit Fajr was packed Saturday with relatives and mourners. Three large Palestinian flags hung from walls and the roof.
"We are sad that she's dead, but we are happy that she killed Jews and injured many," said Abeer Taqataqah, one of Andaleeb's sisters.