The family was preparing to go to bed as soon as it got dark — the electricity was recently cut off because she could not pay the bill.
Shortly afterward, Israeli tanks ringing Jenin, also in the West Bank, began shelling Palestinian security positions just outside the town, which went dark, its electricity apparently cut.
Evoking scenes of chaos as badly hurt victims wandered the streets without medicine, food or water, and doctors at the local hospital attended to the wounded in the dark without electricity or candlelight, she said: "There is no food, not even in the hotels, and there's no water.
Many of them were spent in the dark, without electricity.
It was dark with no electricity in a ransacked government office.
"I sometimes feel like a prisoner, and the killers are at large," Mr. Ghalvi said, sitting in his large living room, dark from no electricity.
The few remaining hospitals were back to overflowing, and rescuers struggled to find people in the dark, with the electricity out.
They are popular with pupils who want to study after dark, businesses during electricity blackouts or as a replacement for toxic kerosene lamps in homes.
By lunch time on Jan . 18 after the storm had passed through the region, some 65,000 homes and businesses were in the dark, with no electricity, heat or hot water in the middle of winter, albeit a mild one.
