A Palestinian gunman shot dead at least eight people at a Jewish religious school in Jerusalem, but Israel said the killings would not derail U.S.-sponsored peace talks.
"It was a slaughterhouse," Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, head of the Zaka emergency service, said of the scene on Thursday night at the Merkaz Harav seminary, one of the city's most prominent Jewish educational centres.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The attack was greeted with celebrations in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip after a recent Israeli offensive there that killed more than 120 Palestinians, about half of them civilians.
"Tonight's massacre in Jerusalem is a defining moment. Those celebrating these murders have shown themselves to be the enemies not only of Israel, but the enemies of peace and reconciliation," said Mark Regev, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said peace talks would continue with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who denounced the shooting.
The attack, which could further complicate U.S. efforts to broker a statehood deal by the end of 2008, followed a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who persuaded Abbas to resume peace talks he suspended over the bloody Gaza assault.
Washington has tried to persuade Israel to ease some travel restrictions on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, but the attack makes that far less likely to happen soon. Jerusalem sources said they believed the attacker was from East Jerusalem.
U.S. President George W. Bush called Olmert. "I told him the United States stands firmly with Israel in the face of this terrible attack," Bush said in a statement.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the foreign ministers of Germany, France and Britain were among the first to strongly condemn the killings.
But the United States accused Libya, backed by several other countries, of preventing the U.N. Security Council from condemning the assault as a "terrorist attack".
CONDEMNATION BLOCKED
