There was only one sign yesterday outside the Clifton Tavern in north Belfast that anything extraordinary had happened within the past 24 hours. A card on a bunch of flowers left on railings read: "Senseless killing".
The bar on the Cliftonville Road was beginning to fill up with customers on New Year's Eve when two gunmen - one armed with an Uzi sub-machinegun, the other with a handgun - entered shortly after 9 p.m.
They had nodded and spoken briefly to people as they walked towards the bar and nobody suspected anything untoward, according to witnesses. They are believed to have pulled on masks just before entering. Once inside, they sprayed the bar with bullets. The stunned customers dived for cover as the attackers fired indiscriminately.
Six people were injured, including Mr Eddie Trainor (31), who was shot in the head and later died in hospital. Two others who were injured are described as "ill but stable" in hospital and another three are "comfortable".
Mr John McIvor (16), who was standing outside at the time of the attack, said: "I heard shooting in the bar and then somebody shouting, `Get down, for God's sake get down.' Two men with guns ran out. I went into the bar. There was a man lying in the corner with a hole in the window just where he had been sitting.
"He was in a bad state. There was blood running down his face and all over his hair."
A man who was in the bar at the time said far more people could have been killed. He said those who carried out the attack were cowards and it hardly took much bravery to shoot unarmed civilians.
There was panic as patrons fled the bar and relatives and neighbours who had heard the shooting arrived on the scene to search for relatives. The daughter of Mr Timothy Murphy (53), who was seriously injured, said: "My brother heard the shots. He knows first aid so he ran down to help.
"My dad had only gone into the bar two minutes earlier. He hadn't even got a drink. My mum and everyone in the house had warned him not to go there but he did anyway."
A bullet sliced through Mr Murphy's arm and into his stomach. Surgeons removed part of his bowel early yesterday.
After they had stopped firing, the gunmen ran to a waiting white car which was later found abandoned in the Shankill. Two masked men had entered a house in the Shankill at around 8.30 p.m., assaulted the occupant and stolen the family car.
The Catholic Cliftonville Road is surrounded by Protestant areas and is particularly vulnerable. During the Troubles that part of Belfast acquired a reputation as one of the North's most common killing grounds.
Meanwhile, shots were fired at the front of a house in Graymount Crescent in the Greencastle area of north Belfast early yesterday. The family escaped uninjured. While the RUC said it was unaware of a motive for the attack, Sinn Fein said it was sectarian.