Gunman opens fire in Jerusalem Jewish seminary

[Schuyler Colfax]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/03/ ... index.html

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- A gunman opened fire on people inside a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem on Thursday, killing at least eight, police and rescue officials said.

Video from the scene showed a frantic crowd of rescue workers carrying bloodied victims into ambulances. Dozens of police officers were scouring the campus and surrounding streets.

Police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said the attacker "opened fire on innocent youngsters studying. A number of students have been killed."

Israeli police and ambulance officials said eight people were killed by the attacker, who was shot dead. Eight people were injured, five of them seriously, according to police.

Jerusalem District Police commander Aharon Franko said: "One terrorist came carrying a box. He took out a long weapon and started on a killing spree."

"There was no alert or warning about this attack," Frank said. He added an Israel Defense Forces officer fatally shot the attacker.

CNN's Ben Wedeman in Gaza reported celebratory shooting shortly after the attack.

The attack comes in the wake of a large-scale Israeli offensive in Gaza that began last week and killed more than 100 people.

Fawzy Barhoom, a spokesman for Hamas which controls Gaza, said: "This operation came directly after the attack committed inside Gaza. This operation is a normal response."

But Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said in a written statement, "The Palestinian Authority condemns any attack on innocent civilians."

The attack was carried out on the Merkaz Harav yeshiva in the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood of west Jerusalem. It is one of the largest seminaries in Israel, with about 500 students in the yeshiva and 200 in an advanced graduate program.

In terms of fatalities, it is the worst attack inside Israel since April 17, 2006, when a suicide bombing outside a Tel Aviv falafel restaurant killed nine people.

Attacks in Jerusalem are rare. Last year, eight people were wounded August 10 in the Old City when a Palestinian resident grabbed a security guard's gun and fired, and four Israeli security guards were wounded May 26 when two Palestinian gunmen began firing in east Jerusalem. All three of the assailants were killed.

An Israeli Foreign Minsitry statement said: "Tonight's murder of yeshiva students during a religious event expresses at its most deplorable the fundamentalist-extremist foundations, in the name of which Palestinian terrorism operates. Israel will never allow terrorism to achieve its goals."

Earlier Thursday, the military wing of Islamic Jihad said it killed an Israeli soldier and wounded three others in what it called a revenge attack.

The Israeli military confirmed the casualties, saying the soldiers were on patrol along the Gaza border Thursday morning when a roadside bomb exploded.

Islamic Jihad said the attack was in revenge for the death earlier this week of one of its senior leaders. Israel said two other militants were also killed in Tuesday night's incursion into Gaza, near Khan Yunis.

In a separate attack, one person was injured when a rocket struck a home in the Israeli town of Sderot, Israeli ambulance officials said.

Israel has staged a series of military operations into Gaza over the last week in an attempt to stop Palestinian militants from firing rockets from the Palestinian territory into Israel.

More than 100 Palestinians have died during the operations. Two Israeli soldiers were also killed.

Witnesses said explosions rocked a border area east of the Gaza village of Garara, setting an Israeli army jeep on fire. Israeli troops, on the lookout for attackers, regularly patrol the border.

Separately, the Israeli military confirmed an airstrike on armed militants in northern Gaza.

The violence came a day after Abbas said he will heed calls to renew peace talks with Israel, an about-face from earlier Wednesday when he said Palestinians wouldn't return to the table before reaching a cease-fire.

The turnaround came as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem, and as the Israeli Security Cabinet approved further military action against Hamas and other militants launching rockets into Israel from Gaza.

Israel will continue peace talks with the Palestinians regardless of the attack in Jerusalem, Foreign Ministry spokesman Aryeh Mekel said Thursday.

Dan Gillerman, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, told CNN he saw no connection between Thursday's shooting and Israel's operations in Gaza.

"There is no retaliation," he said. "These people have been terrorizing Israel for years, have been carrying out suicide bombings and indiscriminate attacks for years."

In Washington, President Bush issuesd a statement saying: "This barbaric and vicious attack on innocent civilians deserves the condemnation of every nation."

The U.N. Security Council is expected to meet late Thursday in New York to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Posted without comment (for now).

[Simplicius]

If you have no comment, you could always just...not comment. "Posted without comment" is best reserved for occasions when you can't comment for reasons of conflict of interest or confidentiality concerns or whatever. "For now" is just silly; you either have something to say or you don't. It's not as if the board will be on tenterhooks waiting for you to finally unveil your commentary.

[EmperorChrostas the Cruel]

This will end VERY badly. I was listening to a radio show today, and a very reliable souce was claiming the site chosen for the attack was the Jewish equivalent of the Dome of the rock. I predict Jewish fundie terrorist reprisals, and a lot of blind eyes turned from Israeli police.

[hongi]

A Palestinian gunman opened fire in a Jewish religious school in Jerusalem, killing at least eight people and wounding about 10 in the most lethal attack in Israel in two years, emergency services said.

"It was a slaughterhouse," said Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, head of the Zaka emergency service after surveying the scene at the Merkaz Harav seminary, one of the most prominent Jewish educational centres in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem police chief Aharon Franco said a lone gunman carried out the attack and was killed by an Israeli army officer who lives nearby and ran to the school after hearing gunfire. Police had said earlier there were two gunmen.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which was greeted with celebrations in the Gaza Strip, where a recent Israeli offensive killed more than 120 Palestinians, about half of whom were identified as civilians.

An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman said "terrorists are trying to destroy the chances of peace but we will certainly continue peace talks'' with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The Palestinian leader condemned the Jerusalem attack.

Witnesses said the gunman entered the crowded seminary and fired an automatic weapon at students in its library. Franco said the attacker killed eight people, and emergency services said about 10 were wounded.

Police said it appeared most of the dead were in their 20's.

"He hid the weapon in a cardboard box," Franco said.

It was the highest Israeli death toll since April 17, 2006, when 11 people were killed and more than 60 wounded in a suicide bombing during the Passover holiday in Tel Aviv.

Yitzhak Dadon, who told reporters that he shot the gunman, said the attacker, wearing torn jeans, fired at the students with a Kalashnikov assault rifle.

"I saw the gunman and he fired a long burst in the air. But then he disappeared. I saw him again when he approached the door of the library. I shot him twice in the head. He started to sway and then someone else with a rifle fired at him, and he died," Dadon said.

Some 50 ambulances raced to the area and police held back worried parents searching for children who had been attending a study session marking the start of Adar, the most festive month of the Jewish calendar.
Outside the school, a crowd shouted "Death to the Arabs".

In the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, gunmen fired in the air to celebrate the attack, three days after Israel ended a ground offensive it said was aimed at curbing cross-border rocket fire.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas official, said the group "blesses the heroic operation in Jerusalem, which was a natural reaction to the Zionist massacre".

A loudspeaker in Gaza City blared the message: "This is God's vengeance."

[Ace Pace]

This will end VERY badly. I was listening to a radio show today, and a very reliable souce was claiming the site chosen for the attack was the Jewish equivalent of the Dome of the rock. I predict Jewish fundie terrorist reprisals, and a lot of blind eyes turned from Israeli police.

Dead flat wrong. Utterly. Who the fuck was saying that?
See news post by Hongi.
This was the main Yeshiva for Religious Zionism. Some interesting facts, the gunman was NOT Palestinian but actually Israeli Arab. He was also the driver for the Yeshiva's outings.

[Flagg]

So was this directly tied to terrorists or was this some disgruntled employee? And is that distinction even being made there?

[MKSheppard]

Some interesting facts, the gunman was NOT Palestinian but actually Israeli Arab. He was also the driver for the Yeshiva's outings.

Oh this should be fun....

[MKSheppard]

Hamas now claims responsibility; and the family of the gunman is now putting up HAMAS flags.

[Flagg]

Hamas now claims responsibility; and the family of the gunman is now putting up HAMAS flags.

There a link to an article or something?

[Dartzap]

Reuters mucked up, apparently. Neither the political or military wings of Hamas have said they did it. The Beeb actually managed to clear that up remarkably quickly when it was all breaking earlier.

[Ma Deuce]

If you have no comment, you could always just...not comment. "Posted without comment" is best reserved for occasions when you can't comment for reasons of conflict of interest or confidentiality concerns or whatever.

I think it's a habit for those used to boards that use vBulletin, which unlike PhpBB typically doesn't allow users to submit a post that doesn't have at least some regular text (i.e, not part of a URL) outside a quote box.