Samsung Galaxy S II :: Failed During Firmware Update?

I accepted doing it, so it backed-up some of my data and started the installation. The progress bar remained at 0% for more than 40 minutes and I became suspicious that it was not working. I tried interrupting with the cancel button and that didn't work, so the only way was to remove the cable (yes there were warnings not to do it... still I assumed that this scenario would have been foreseen). Kies woke up with the interruption and asked if I wanted to do an emergency firmware recovery, I said yes and proceeded with it. It gave me some instructions to switch off the phone, replace battery, and remove the cable. I switched the phone off and on again and there appeared a symbol representing the loss of connection to the PC, so I re-connected. The recovery started fine, but half way through it, it failed due to a problem on the phone. Since then the phone is dead. It won't start anymore.