JERUSALEM // The Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has condemned the attack on a Jerusalem synagogue on Tuesday in which four people were killed.
The attack was carried by two Palestinians from East Jerusalem armed with a gun and meat cleavers who also wounded nine other worshippers before being shot dead in the city’s bloodiest attack in years.
“The Palestinian presidency has always condemned the killing of civilians on either side, and condemns today the killing of worshippers at a synagogue in west Jerusalem,” Mr Abbas said in a statement released by his office.
All four victims were Israelis with dual nationality – three were US citizens and the fourth British, police said.
The attackers were identified by family members as Uday and Ghassan Abu Jamal, cousins from the west Jerusalem neighbourhood of Jabal Mukaber. Both were in their 20s.
The attack raised fears that the Israel-Palestinian conflict was taking on a dangerous religious dimension.
The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to respond with “a heavy hand”, calling the attack the “direct result” of incitement by Mr Abbas and Hamas.
However, the US president Barack Obama called for calm, urging Israelis and Palestinians to work together to “lower tensions, reject violence and seek a path forward towards peace”.
“Tragically this is not the first loss of life that we have seen in recent months. Too many Israelis have died, too many Palestinians have died,” Mr Obama said.
Analysts warned a harsh Israeli response could potentially escalate a situation already fraught with tension.
“This event has the potential of being a game changer,” said Kobi Michael, senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies.
In Jabal Mukaber, police rounded up the perpetrators’ family members, sparking clashes with stone-throwing youths, relatives said. Police confirmed arresting nine people.
Arab East Jerusalem has been a tinderbox since early July when Jewish extremists killed a 16-year-old Palestinian in revenge for the murder of three Jewish teenagers, sparking a wave of violence which has shown no sign of letting up.
There have since been a string of deadly attacks by lone Palestinians, but none was as serious as Tuesday killings at the synagogue in an ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood.
As well as the four killed, eight other people were wounded, including two policemen, one of whom was in critical condition, with witnesses saying several people had limbs hacked off.
The attack began shortly before 7am when the assailants, waving meat cleavers and a gun, burst in at the synagogue in a Jewish seminary in Har Nof.
Three policemen engaged in a gunbattle with the attackers, police said.
Emergency worker Moti Bukchi said the scene was “harrowing”.
“Inside the synagogue some were wounded by gunshots, others had chopped off limbs caused by a meat cleaver,” he said.
“We have seen things here for the first time – a man goes in with a meat cleaver and starts to attack people and chop off their limbs. That is something new.”
The funerals of the four victims began at dusk at a nearby cemetery.
The Har Nof neighbourhood is very close to the former Palestinian village of Deir Yassin, where Jewish militias massacred more than 100 resident in 1948.
A similar attack to Tuesday’s took place in March 2008 when a Palestinian gunman killed eight students and wounded 11 at the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva just two kilometres away before being shot dead.
The men who carried out Tuesday’s attack were claimed as members by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a militant group, though it did not say whether it had instructed them to carry out the attack.
Hamas, the Islamist militant group that runs the Gaza Strip, praised the attack. Dozens of people took to the streets in Gaza to celebrate, with some offering trays full of candy.
The Israeli defence minister Moshe Yaalon vowed Israel would hunt down those who sent the perpetrators “wherever they are and in whatever way necessary, both inside and outside Israel’s borders”.
The public security minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch pledged to ease controls on carrying weapons for self-defence in a move which would apply to anyone licensed to carry a gun, such as private security guards and off-duty army officers.
* Agence France-Presse and Associated Press
