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Maybe I'm a little confused, but today's New York Times website has a series of stories about the end of the siege at the Church of the Nativity. One link reads:



Church Undamaged After 38-Day Standoff
Click on the link, however, and you get a page titled:



Stench Fills Jesus' Birthplace After Siege
And a story that begins:



BETHLEHEM, West Bank (Reuters) - The overwhelming stench of urine was the first thing to hit visitors who entered the shrine in Bethlehem revered as the birthplace of Jesus.



The standoff between Palestinian militants and the Israeli army at the Church of the Nativity, which came to an end on Friday after nearly 40 days and nights of high drama, had left one of Christianity's holiest places in a shocking mess.



Garbage bags, lemon peels, gas canisters, petrol cans and electric hotplates were scattered throughout the church off Manger Square. A Reuters correspondent saw altars, the sacred focus of Christian worship, covered with food scraps.



"It's not a church any more, it's a place filled with beds and trash," said Sandy Shahin, a local teen-ager who rushed into the church minutes after the end of the siege Friday.



"The smell is too bad. The floor is too bad. I'm filled with fear," Shahin, a Roman Catholic, said between sobs.
Keep reading, and it gets "better":



Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian denominations share the fourth-century shrine, where areas of worship appeared to have escaped major damage in the standoff that included exchanges of gunfire between Israeli troops and the gunmen.



But the second floor of the Franciscan order's parish building in the complex looked like a war zone. Walls were pockmarked by bullet holes and scarred by smoke stains.



"I couldn't imagine something like this,'' said Manal Deik, a local banker, standing next to a bullet-riddled church wall which was also marked with graffiti scrawled in Arabic.



"We will repair it because the damage is not outside, it's inside and we can do something about that,'' said the 25-year-old Catholic.



Greek Orthodox priest Father Kariton, standing in the basilica near a pile of discarded gas masks, added: "The most important things are okay, but the museum is a little damaged.''



BICKERING



Soon after the militants left, priests from the often bickering denominations argued over whether to allow Israeli army bomb disposal experts in to make sure no explosives were left behind. The clergymen decided in favor of a sweep.



"We have found 40 explosive devices and five rifles hidden there and the IDF is dismantling them now,'' an army spokeswoman said.
All this is how the NY Times defines "undamaged." Amazing.

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