CCTV footage of a shooting in central Tel Aviv Friday afternoon. Photo: YouTube Screnshot

In interviews with Israeli media outlets on Friday afternoon, eyewitnesses recalled the harrowing scene of a terror shooting attack at a popular bar in central Tel Aviv earlier in the day.

“The shooter approached with a scarf over his face and a black-grey jacket, took a weapon out of his bag behind his back and started shooting,” one eyewitness told Israeli Walla news. “There was a girl just lying on the street, bleeding. Another pregnant woman fell. And what little I managed to see, he had a little smile while he was shooting. Like he was pleased with it.”

Police and ambulances arrived within a few minutes, moving away bystanders and treating the wounded. The shooter ran off down the street and disappeared, he said.

The witness, who said he was a former Israeli combat soldier, said he was sure the shooter was carrying an Israeli-made Uzi submachine gun.

Another eyewitness told Channel 2 that she saw a pregnant woman faint. She said her life was probably spared when bullets were intercepted by wooden benches between her friends and her and the shooter.

Security camera footage of the shooting was uploaded to YouTube shortly after the attack. One video appears to show the shooter reaching into a bag and pulling out his weapon, before exiting a shop next door and firing on the pub.

The owner of a natural medicine shop adjacent to where the attack took place said two girls ran into the store after the shooting began.

“It took me a little while to find the keys but as soon as I found them I locked us inside,” she said.

“People are talking about this like it was a terrorist attack rather than something criminal, but there’s no way of knowing. I’m still in the store and I’m not going out anytime soon, even though we’re closing soon.”

Two Israelis were killed and seven others wounded in the attack. According to the reports, citing Israeli defense officials, the attacker is a 29-year-old Arab Israeli citizen from a village located near Haifa in the Wadi Ara area. He reportedly was motivated to carry out the attack by radical Islamist incitement.