On a Wednesday evening in early September, officers from the Jerusalem police forensic unit were sitting around a table sipping coffee at a local cafe. A week later, at exactly the same time, they were there again.
This time they were rummaging through the pockets of bloodied corpses and taking imprints of severed fingers to identify the seven people whose mangled bodies lay sprawled in the wrecked cafe, blown up moments before in a suicide bombing.
"They see things that a human being should never see," said police spokesman Gil Kleiman.
Like their counterparts abroad, the main job of the Jerusalem police forensic unit is to collect evidence at crime scenes.
But the technicians have increasingly become specialists in suicide bombings three years into a Palestinian uprising in which more than 450 Israelis have been killed in more than 100 suicide attacks by Palestinian militants.
So much so that they have begun training forensic teams from abroad on procedures at suicide bombing scenes.
After a more than two-month lull in such attacks, the Israeli experts were called into action again on Dec. 25 when a suicide bomber killed four people at a bus stop near Tel Aviv.
"I can't even begin to count how many terror attacks I've worked at," said officer Ronen Levi, referring to the carnage in buses, shops, open-air malls and supermarkets. "I've stopped counting."
Now, each suicide bombing forensic kit comes complete with 100 sets of numbered identification bracelets and plastic bags, forms and stickers so the body, body parts and personal effects of each victim are clearly marked and stored.
At the Jerusalem cafe bombing, the officers inspected each contorted body lying in the spot where the person died -- some still sitting on chairs and others sprawled on the ground.
They scoured each body for hidden scars and other physical characteristics to help with identification. The victims' hair and eye color, clothing, jewelry and other personal effects were recorded both with a camera and in a written report.
The aim was to obtain enough information to help relatives identify each body as quickly as possible, preferably without having to view the mangled remains of their loved ones.
"We are like a well-oiled machine. It used to take us many hours to work at a bomb site, now we do it much more quickly," said unit commander Albert Shamai at the station-house.
Like other members of his unit, Levi has learned to block the horror of decapitated heads and body parts which he photographs and collects in plastic bags.
"We learn how to look but not to see. To see but then to forget about it quickly," Levi said. "The moment you start to think about it is the moment you can't do this job anymore."
Occasionally, he sees something so horrible that it cracks his composure.
Recalling a suicide bombing at a Jerusalem pizzeria about two years ago, he said: "I saw a little girl or at least what remained of a little girl. Not much of her remained. But on her feet were the same black dress-up shoes that my wife had just bought for my daughter.
"I saw these shoes on her tiny feet and a jolt of electricity went through my body."
Levi immediately telephoned his wife and told her to throw out the shoes they had just bought their toddler.
The unit's other task is to identify the bomber's body among the corpses. Usually it is not too difficult as they have almost always been decapitated by the force of the blast.
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