AT FIRST, Yehuda Mesilati thought there had been a car crash. But as he moved closer, he saw the bullet holes that had shattered the windscreen. Then he heard a baby cry.
Smashing a window, he extricated the infant boy from the back seat the parents lay slumped, dead, in the front.
The killing of Efrat and Yaron Unger, a young couple from the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, devastated even Israelis inured to emotion over months and years of violence.
The victims were a couple in their mid 20s the mother was pregnant with her second child their babies must now be brought up by their grandparents and, most shocking of all, they were killed inside sovereign Israel, near the village of Geffen, a good few kilometres from the border with the West Bank.
Israeli officials were hard pressed to recall the last occasion when Palestinian gunmen had struck at civilians inside Israel. What they did say was that, in contrast to the suicide bombings that rocked Israel this spring and helped defeat Mr Shimon Peres in last month's general elections, the shooting was probably not the work of Hamas or other Islamic extremists, but of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a secular Palestinian group that shares Hamas's unequivocal opposition to Israeli Palestinian reconciliation.
The election winner, hard liner Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, has not even taken office yet. But he is already getting a bitter taste of what lies in store.
Hours after the Ungers were shot dead in their car, five Israeli soldiers were killed by Hizbullah gunmen in a pre dawn clash inside the Israeli held "security zone" in southern Lebanon.
The soldiers were ambushed as they returned to their emplacement after an all night patrol. Apart from the dead, three others were badly hurt. Hizbullah boasted later that every soldier in the patrol was hit the Israeli army subsequently confirmed the claim.
The Iranian backed guerrillas vowed to "transform south Lebanon into a volcano to throw out the Israeli occupation", in a statement claiming responsibility for the dawn attack.
After formal consultations with Mr Netanyahu, Mr Peres authorised retaliatory shelling at what Israel said were Hizbullah targets. Reports from Lebanon indicated that one, or possibly two, civilians were killed deaths that Hizbullah spokesmen claimed violated "understandings" about not targeting civilians reached in the aftermath of the last flare up of fighting in south Lebanon, Israel's "Grapes of Wrath" bombardment in April.
The two Lebanese casualties were travelling in a car which was hit by shrapnel from Israeli shelling of Habbush, six km from the occupied buffer strip.
Mr Netanyahu won over a narrow majority of Israeli voters with a promise to bring "peace and security" to his country. The bloodshed of the past 24 hours underlines the size of his task.
No hardliner could have hit southern Lebanon harder than did Mr Peres in April in a fruitless effort to disable Hizbullah. And no right winger determined to strengthen the Israeli presence in the West Bank would dare erect the full scale border fence that might have thwarted the killing of the Ungers.
AFP adds: Yesterday's attack brings the Israeli death toll in south Lebanon to nine since the elections and marks a direct challenge by Hizbullah to Mr Netanyahu's authority.
Just one day after his victory Hizbullah killed four Israeli soldiers in an ambush.
The Lebanese Foreign Minister, Mr Fares Bweiz, said yesterday the escalation in south Lebanon reflects the tension in the region since the Israeli election.
A Hizbullah spokesman in Beirut said the "Israeli bombardment of civilian targets" was a "blatant violation of the April understanding".
Under the terms of the April 26th deal Hizbullah and Israel pledged not to target civilians on either side of the border.
The truce also called for the setting up of a ceasefire monitoring committee made up of representatives from France, the United States, Syria, Israel and Lebanon. But several rounds of talks in Washington involving the five countries have been fruitless.