A Reuters reporter saw two bodies at the scene.
BULLET TO THE HEAD
The scene in the aftermath of the incident was reminiscent of numerous suicide bombings that destroyed buses on Jaffa Road during a wave of attacks in 1996 and during the first years of a Palestinian uprising that began in 2000.
Since then, fatal attacks on Israelis have become relatively rare, despite frequent rocket and mortar fire from Gaza. Israeli forces have killed more than 360 Palestinians this year, mostly in Gaza. More than 100 of the Palestinian dead were civilians.
The incident came nearly two weeks into a shaky ceasefire in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas.
"We do not expect it will influence the Gaza calm," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in Gaza.
"There is a continued aggression against our people in the West Bank and Jerusalem and so it is natural that our people there will respond to such aggression," he said, in apparent reference to Israeli raids against militants.
Hamas's allies, Islamic Jihad, said in a statement: "The Jerusalem Brigades bless the heroic operation in Jerusalem as the natural reaction to the crimes of the occupation."
Unlike Palestinians in Gaza and in the occupied West Bank, those living in Arab East Jerusalem, which was also captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, have free access to the Jewish west of the city and to Israel.
Arab and Jewish populations do not mix extensively, but Palestinian workers are a familiar sight on construction and highway projects in Israel.
The gunman who attacked the seminary in March was from East Jerusalem. That attack was claimed by Hamas officials.
At Gaza's border crossing with Egypt, Egyptian forces used water cannon and Hamas security forces had to restrain a crowd jostling for access during a brief opening of the Rafah crossing point between the Palestinian enclave and its Arab neighbour.
Some Palestinians threw stones at Egyptian forces and also complained of Hamas's failure to speed their passage to Egypt, the only access to the outside world for most Gazans, who are blocked from other land, sea and air routes by Israel.
For CHRONOLOGY on attacks in Jerusalem, click on
