MIDDLE EAST: On one of the tables, an abandoned bouquet of roses and a half-drunk glass of wine. On the wood-panelled floor, the brutal mix of blood and shattered glass.
Irit Rahamim and her girl-friends were finishing up their bridal shower at Tel Aviv's Seafood Market restaurant in the early hours of yesterday morning when the first shots rang out. "None of us thought we'd get out alive," she said later. "I called my fiancé on the mobile phone and told him, 'That's it. I'll never see you again."
Ms Rahamim is going ahead with her wedding today, to a local soccer star. She had been breaking up the pre-wedding meal at a little after 2 a.m. as the gunfire started because she wanted to get some sleep before her final dress fitting. "But of course I haven't slept at all," she said yesterday afternoon. "We're all in shock. From such happiness, such joy, to this."
Her group survived the attack; others were not so fortunate. Ibrahaim Hassouna, the 20-year-old Palestinian gunman, killed three Israelis before he was gunned down outside the downtown restaurant, which had drawn a large crowd for its live music night: Two of the victims were men in their early 50s. The other was a 33-year-old Arab-Druse policeman, Salim Barakat, who had dashed out of his patrol car and closed in on Hassouna - who pulled out a knife and stabbed him.
Until recently, such attacks in the heart of sovereign Israel were invariably carried out by extremists from Hamas or Islamic Jihad. But Hassouna, who lived in a West Bank refugee camp, was a member of the Palestinian Authority's naval police and the Al-Aqsa Brigades - gunmen affiliated with the Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO. Again adopting the practices of the Islamic radicals, Hassouna recorded a "farewell" tape, posing with gun and Koran, and urging his mother to rejoice in his death. "I am a martyr, a hero, like the others," he declared.
Hassouna's victims were not yesterday's only fatalities. Two more Israelis were killed - a mother-of-four from the settlement of Efrat, shot dead by Fatah gunmen on the "tunnel road" that runs from the West Bank towards southern Jerusalem, and an 85-year-old man, blown up by an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber on a bus in Afula, north of Tel Aviv.
Five Palestinians were killed as well: Three men were blown up by a missile fired at their car from an Israeli helicopter outside Ramallah last night. Two of the dead were members of Mr Arafat's Force 17 unit, and the third was an aide to Fatah leader, Mr Marwan Barghouti. All were said by Israel to have been involved in intifada attacks, including the planning for Saturday night's Jerusalem suicide bombing. Another man was killed by Israeli troops at Dura, south of Hebron in the West Bank, in gunbattles during an Israeli raid. And a Palestinian policeman died in an explosion at a building in Gaza City - where a bomb was apparently being assembled.
Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, had spoken on Monday night of the need to "inflict heavy losses" to make clear to the Palestinians "that they will achieve nothing through terror" and thus pave the way to resumed negotiations. Adopting Mr Sharon's declared policy of "continuous" military response, army helicopters yesterday also fired missiles at Palestinian Authority installations in Gaza City, Khan Younis, Ramallah and Nablus.
Palestinian officials blamed Mr Sharon for deliberately escalating the conflict, and repeated their calls for UN, US and/or European intervention. The Bush administration is now said to be contemplating returning its envoy Gen Anthony Zinni to the region.
Even before his aide had been killed last night, Mr Barghouti had publicly called on Fatah gunmen to attack "all Israeli army roadblocks, the symbols of the reviled occupation". And at the funerals in Ramallah of Bushra Abu Kweik and her three children, hit on Monday by what Israel said was misdirected tank fire, thousands of marchers called for revenge.
Ominously, there were two new twists to the violence yesterday: Three children were hurt when Kassam rockets fired from Gaza fell near a home in the southern Israeli town of Sderot. And seven pupils and a teacher were injured at a school in the Arab Surbacher neighbourhood of East Jerusalem, in a bombing claimed by a Jewish vigilante group.