Jerusalem gunman kills eight at religious school

JERUSALEM – A lone gunman stormed a well-known Jewish religious school in Jerusalem on Thursday night and killed eight people in the deadliest attack in the city in more than four years.

Armed with a pistol and machine gun, the attacker walked into the unguarded Yeshiva Mercaz HaRav and opened fire in the library and a nearby dormitory before police killed him.

“I saw a terrible scene of young guys in the library holding holy books in their hands,” said Yerach Tucker, a volunteer medical responder who got to the scene while the attack was under way. “You see the fear in the eyes of the Israelis.”

There were no immediate, credible claims of responsibility, though Hezbollah television in Beirut said the shooting was carried out by a new group that seeks to avenge the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, a leader of the militant Lebanese Shiite Muslim group. Mughniyeh was killed last month by a car bomb in Damascus, the Syrian capital, an attack that many suspect was orchestrated by Israel.

Leaders of Hamas in the Gaza Strip called the attack an inevitable response to last week’s military operation in Gaza that killed more than 100 Palestinians.

“There will always be someone who will avenge Palestinian blood,” Munir Masri, a Hamas member of the Palestinian legislature, told Al Aqsa television after the attack.

Though the name of the killer at the school wasn’t released, Israeli government officials said he lived in East Jerusalem, which suggests that he was an Arab.

The attack was the deadliest in Jerusalem since Feb. 22, 2004, when a suicide bomber on a bus killed eight and wounded 60.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas denounced the shooting, and negotiators on both sides said the attack shouldn’t derail the effort to revive peace talks.

While the motivation for the attack wasn’t immediately clear, the school may have been targeted because of its historic status as a cornerstone for the religious settlement movement that opposes giving up land in the West Bank as part of any peace agreement with the Palestinians. Founded in 1924, the Yeshiva is one of Israel’s elite religious schools and has more than 500 students.

Israelis gathered outside the school, chanting “Death to Arabs” and “Olmert’s to blame.”

Witnesses said the gunman walked into the unguarded open courtyard outside the five-story concrete school shortly after 8:30 p.m. as students were preparing to celebrate the start of Adar, considered the most festive month in the Jewish calendar. Dressed in street clothes, the man pulled a Kalashnikov assault rifle from a bag and started shooting.

As police and rescue workers rushed to the scene, witnesses said the shooter opened fire on the street. By the time the shooter was killed, eight people were dead and nine were wounded.