Jerusalem: A Palestinian gunman opened fire inside a Jewish religious school in Jerusalem late night, killing eight people in an attack that threatened to torpedo peace efforts amid ever-escalating violence. Eight students at the Merkaz Harav Yeshiva in predominantly Jewish West Jerusalem were killed and another nine wounded when a Palestinian from east Jerusalem entered the building and started shooting, police said.

"The terrorist arrived with a packet in his hand, got out a weapon and started firing, killing eight people and wounding nine others," Aharon Franco, head of Jerusalem district police, told reporters on the scene. The attacker was shot dead by law enforcement officers, he said.

Ambulances rushed to the school while helicopters circled in the skies after what marked the first major attack in Jerusalem since Feburary 2004,when a suicide bomber killed eight people and himself aboard a bus. In Beirut, Hezbollah s television announced that the authors were members of a previously unknown group called "Phalange of Free Men of Galilee - Groups of the Martyr Imad Mughnieh and Martyrs of Gaza." Hezbollah official Nawaf Moussaoui, reached by AFP, said he had no comment on the attack.

Imad Mughnieh was a top Hezbollah commander assassinated in a Damascus bombing on February 12. The Jerusalem attack came after more than a week of escalated Israeli-Palestinian violence in and around the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, where more than 130 Palestinians have been killed in eight days. The Palestinian Hamas movement hailed the attack as "heroic" as hundreds of people poured out in the streets of Gaza to celebrate the shootings.

Source : PTI