Seven Israelis shot dead in East Jerusalem terror attack at synagogue
At least seven Israelis were shot dead and several others were wounded on Friday night as a Palestinian terrorist opened fire on Jews leaving a synagogue in East Jerusalem.
Israeli police said the gunman, who has not yet been named, was killed shortly after their officers arrived on the scene.
The attack took place as residents were leaving a synagogue in the Israeli settlement of Neve Yaakov, local media reports said, with an elderly woman and a teenager among the victims.
On Friday night, police sirens roared across East Jerusalem as officers cordoned off the scene. The attack took place on Holocaust Memorial Day and shortly after the beginning of Shabbat in the Jewish faith.
Israeli police said the attacker arrived at the scene in a car at around 8.15pm local time and opened fire with a handgun, killing seven and wounding three others.
He then went "on the run" but was caught within five minutes and shot dead, police said. One local media report identified the shooter as a young Palestinian man from East Jerusalem.
The attack appeared to be the deadliest in Jerusalem since the 2014 Har Nof synagogue shooting, in which four rabbis and a police officer were killed by Palestinian terrorists.
Tensions had already soared in Israel and the West Bank over Thursday's Israeli raid on Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants in the Jenin refugee camp, which left nine dead including an elderly woman.
It was not immediately clear if Islamic Jihad was behind the Jerusalem attack, which US state department spokesman Vedant Patel condemned as "heinous".
"This is absolutely horrific. Our thoughts, prayers and condolences go out to those killed by this heinous act of violence. We condemn this apparent terrorist attack in the strongest terms. Our commitment to Israel's security remains ironclad," he said.
"I heard a lot of bullets," Matanel Almalem, an 18-year-old student who lives near the synagogue, told AFP news agency at the scene.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, held a security assessment on Friday night while Israel's defence minister was recalled from a trip to the United States.
Earlier on Friday, Palestinian fighters in Gaza launched a small number of rockets at Israel in retaliation over Thursday's raid on the Jenin camp, with most intercepted by Israeli air defence.
Israel responded with an airstrike on an underground factory used by Hamas to produce rockets. The restrained exchange of fire suggested that both sides had at that point hoped to avoid a significant escalation.
Friday night's attack is the first security crisis for Mr Netanyahu's new government, which is propped up by a number of ultra-nationalist far-Right Israeli politicians.
Hamas in Gaza did not claim responsibility for the attack on Friday night but said it was "a response to the crime conducted by the occupation in Jenin and a natural response to the occupation's criminal actions".
Earlier on Friday, midday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which can be a catalyst for clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police, passed in relative calm.
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, is due to visit Israel and the Palestinian territories next week for meetings with both sides and is said to be "working the phones" to prevent another major escalation.
There are growing concerns that Israelis and Palestinians are nearing a new round of fighting on a similar scale to the May 2021 war, or August's brief but bloody exchange of fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
Some Palestinians celebrated the shooting in the West Bank and Gaza on Friday night.
