A Palestinian gunman entered the library of a rabbinical seminary and opened fire on a crowded nighttime study session Thursday, killing eight people before he was shot dead, police and rescue workers said. It was the first major, spraying dozens of bullets. Rosenfeld said at least six empty bullet clips were found on the floor.
Rescue workers said nine people were wounded, three seriously.
"Tonight's massacre in Jerusalem is a defining moment," Israel government spokesman Mark Regev told The Associated Press. "It is clear that those people celebrating this bloodshed have shown themselves to be not only the enemies of Israel but of all of humanity."
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, condemned the attack. But Regev said the Palestinians must go further and take steps against extremists..
One of the students, Yitzhak Dadon, said he shot the attacker twice in the head, neutralizing him before a soldier killed the man with an automatic rifle. "I laid on the roof of the study hall, cocked my gun and waited for him. He came out of the library spraying automatic fire," he said. sobbed uncontrollably.
The seminar is the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in the Kiryat Moshe quarter at the entrance to Jerusalem, a prestigious center of Jewish studies identified with the leadership of the Jewish settlement movement in the West Bank. The seminary, founded by the late Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Hacohen Kook, the movement's spiritual founder, serves some 400 high school students and young Israeli soldiers, and many of them carry arms.
"It's very sad tonight in Jerusalem," Mayor Uri Lupolianski told Channel 2 TV. "Many people were killed in the heart of Jerusalem."
In Beirut, Lebanon, Hezbollah's Manar satellite television station said a previously unknown group called the Martyrs of Imad Mughniyeh and Gaza was responsible for the attack. The claim could not immediately be verified. Mughniyeh, a Hezbollah terror mastermind, was killed in a car bomb in Syria last month. Hezbollah has blamed Israel for the assassination, and Israel has been fearing a revenge attack.
In Gaza, Hamas stopped just short of claiming responsibility. "We bless the (Jerusalem) operation. It will not be the last," the group said in a statement sent to reporters by text message.
In mosques in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip, many residents gave prayers of thanksgiving - only recited in cases of great victory.
In Jebaliya, about 7,000 Gazans of different factions marched in the streets, firing in the air in celebration, and visited homes of those killed and wounded in the last incursion. In the southern town of Rafah, residents distributed sweets to moving cars, and militants fired mortars in celebration.
The attack came a day after Rice persuaded Abbas to return to peace talks with Israel. Abbas briefly suspended talks to protest an Israeli offensive in Gaza that killed more than 120 Palestinians.
At his West Bank headquarters, Abbas harshly criticized the attack. "The president condemned all attacks that target civilians, whether they are Palestinian or Israeli."
In Washington, Rice said she called Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to express condolences. "The United States condemns tonight's act of terror and depravity," the statement said. "This barbarous act has no place among civilized peoples and shocks the conscience of all peace loving nations. There is no cause that could ever justify this action."
Israel's Foreign Ministry issued a statement condemning.
The attack came on the same day as Thursday that Israel is open to the idea of letting guards from Abbas' moderate Fatah movement oversee Gaza's borders - one of the main tenets of the truce idea. But the Israeli spoke before the shooting, and it was not immediately known whether the Israeli Th.
This was the first serious attack by Palestinian militants in Jerusalem since a suicide bomber killed eight people on Feb. 22, 2004. There have been several attacks since then, and police and the military say they have foiled many other attempts. Militants have also attacked.