Lebanese friends had suggested a missionary role in this part of southern Lebanon – where thousands of Palestinians in the city’s huge refugee camp have now allied themselves to Islamist movements – could be a very perilous occupation for the young American nurse.
And, yesterday morning, someone shot her three times in the head outside the clinic she helped to run in Sidon.”May God forgive them,” was all the medical centre’s director, the Reverend Sami Dagher, could say of her murderers. But was Mrs Weatherall, who was married to a British doctor, killed because of her religion or her nationality?She was the first American to be killed in Lebanon in more than a decade – her shooting coincided with the serious wounding of two US Marines in Kuwait – and her murder was a chilling reminder of the last time Westerners were culled in Lebanese cities. Earlier this month, bombs damaged three American fast-food restaurants.Bahia Hariri, an MP, immediately called a meeting of Muslim clerics, social workers and officials in Sidon to denounce Mrs Weatherall’s killing.A Swedish friend of the dead woman, Asa Bjork, described how Mrs Weatherall – a Baptist at the Christian Missionary Alliance Church – helped pregnant women at the clinic, which was set up to care for Sidon’s poor. But in a city such as Sidon, Mrs Weatherall’s life was forfeit.One Lebanese official said yesterday that Mrs Weatherall had been told several times that preaching in her church could arouse great animosity. Sidon is perhaps the strictest of Lebanese cities – alcohol is forbidden and the city, unlike the rest of Lebanon, which accepts Saturday and Sunday as its weekend, closes down for the Muslim Sabbath on Fridays.In Kuwait, meanwhile, two US Marines were shot less than two months after a Marine was killed by gunmen in the emirate.

US officials did not explain why the soldiers were travelling in a civilian car – nor if they were dressed in civilian clothes.At least a third of the country has now been cordoned off by Kuwaiti troops to allow the Americans to build up their forces for a possible invasion of Iraq. Kuwaiti officials claim they have arrested several al-Qa’ida members in the emirate.At least 10 Lebanese and Kurdish gunmen claiming to admire Osama bin Laden remain at large in the Palestinian camp of Ein al-Helweh just outside Sidon. Are Americans once more to be targets of opportunity in the Middle East?. ARIEL SHARON, the Israeli Prime Minister, ordered the army to carry out a “wide and extensive operation” in response to the suicide bombing of a bus in Jerusalem yesterday morning that killed 11 commuters and schoolchildren. He told The Independent: “The leaders of Hamas will be hard pressed to find a safe place to hide or a safe place to sleep in.”Mr Gissin stressed that Israel would not be provoked into the kind of massive retaliation that would jeopardise President George Bush’s campaign against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. “The only thing that guides Mr Sharon is how to bring down the level of terrorism,” he said.The bombing, the first in Jerusalem in three months, came barely 36 hours after the opposition Labour party chose the dovish former general Amram Mitzna as its standard-bearer for the 28 January general election. Welcoming Mr Mitzna’s victory in Tuesday’s primary, the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, took care to say that he was not interfering in Israel’s internal politics Hamas, it seems, had no such scruples.

Yesterday’s atrocity strikes a devastating blow to Mr Mitzna’s chances of persuading an already sceptical public to give peace one more chance.Labour has been there before. After Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination by a Jewish extremist in November 1995, his successor, Shimon Peres, looked likely to win the general elections. But a season of Hamas bombings in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and the southern port city of Ashkelon in early 1996 tilted the balance to the right-wing Likud party’s Binyamin Netanyahu.Support for Mr Peres, the Nobel peace prize-winning architect of the 1993 Oslo accords, swung from 59 per cent immediately after he took over as acting prime minister to a tiny margin for Mr Netanyahu by polling day at the end of May. Mr Peres had no doubt that Hamas had brought the right back to power.Hamas’s bellicose statements after yesterday’s bombing, its repudiation of any ceasefire and its pledge to “make life hell” for Israelis, suggest that it knew what it was doing. A perpetuation of Mr Sharon’s mailed-fist policies and boycott of Mr Arafat is exactly what Hamas needs to fuel its campaign against Israel.Mr Mitzna cannot change his platform – an immediate resumption of negotiations with Mr Arafat, evacuation of the Gaza Strip, a readiness for substantial West Bank withdrawals – even if he wanted to. He would lose all credibility if he changed tack now.Hanoch Smith, a veteran pollster, summed it up: “Mitzna didn’t have too wonderful a chance even without the bombing. I don’t think one bombing changes anything, but if there’s a whole series during the election campaign, it’s going to be even harder Sharon’s in a win-win situation If the bombings stop, he can say ‘we tamed them’ If they go on, he can say ‘we’re hitting the terrorists’.”.