A COUNCILLOR told today of the terrifying moment she saw her family almost killed in a bomb attack -- on the TV news.

Blackburn with Darwen councillor Karimeh Foster watched in horror as footage was shown of her cousin Samir Nazal and his children under attack from soldiers in their Palestinian home.

She said she had been watching the news bulletins with extra care in recent weeks as the situation had grown more tense in the Middle East.

Coun Foster, who is originally from Jordan, went to boarding school at Bait-Jala, near Bethlehem, where much of the recent trouble has taken place.

She later became a nurse and first lieutenant in the Jordanian army.

She said her blood ran cold as she sat down in front of the news to see a cousin at the centre of the Israeli attacks.

"He felt because there was a lot of shooting near the house, that his first instinct was to take his children downstairs and shelter them from the attack," she said.

"But after a few minutes he heard a bomb shaking the whole house, and the television pictures afterwards showed the beds in the children's rooms where the bomb had gone.

"I just went blank watching it, then my heartbeat started racing , seeing someone you belong to and this happening to them. People say 'out of sight out of mind' but my heart dropped when I saw that picture." The family had managed to escape the attack although Coun Foster has been unable to contact them yet.

Coun Foster moved to England in 1978, leaving her family behind in the Middle East, and now has two daughters at university, and is married to David Foster, also a Lib Dem councillor.

Yet although recent television news bulletins have brought the horror of the violence from her former home , Karimeh feels they have favoured the Israeli side of it.

She said few people in the west understood that many of those being attacked by Israelis were not Muslims but Christians too. She said the pictures showed clearly how Israel was attacking law-abiding people such as her cousin.

She added: "I have direct experience of it, having lived there through the 1967 war, which the Israelis won. And my parents lost their home three times because of the troubles there. They live now in Jordan, and fortunately they don't have these problems at the moment."

"I am putting a brave face on it, carrying on going to work but inside I am very upset and bitter at what has been going on.

"If the Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak had done something about it at the beginning this need not have happened. He let it slip through his hands."

Coun Foster was today trying to make contact with her family in the Middle East for an update on the situation.

Picture: Karimeh Foster watches the Middle East troubles on TV