Hamas backtracks claim of Jerusalem killings
JERUSALEM (AP) - March 7, 2008 Masses of mourners marched in funeral processions after a rabbi
who recited Hebrew psalms with the crowd repeating them after him.
In the Gaza Strip, Hamas militants backtracked on an earlier
claim of responsibility for the first major attack in Jerusalem in
four years.
The attacker walked through the Mercaz Harav seminary's main
gate and entered the library, where witnesses said some 80 students
were gathered. He opened fire with an assault rifle and a pistol,
police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. The gunman was shot and
killed on the scene.
Israeli officials said the victims were between ages 15 and 19
except one, who was 26. They identified one of the slain as
16-year-old Avraham David Moses, an American citizen whose parents
moved to Israel in the 1990s. The State Department confirmed an
American was killed.
The attack came on the heels of an Israeli offensive on Gaza
that Palestinian officials say killed more than 120. The campaign
targeted militants who have been barraging southern Israel with
rockets. Four Israelis have also been killed in fighting since last
week.
It was not immediately clear whether a militant group had
orchestrated the shooting.
Ibrahim Daher, head of Hamas' al-Aqsa radio, said his station
put out an earlier claim of responsibility prematurely. Abu Obeida,
a spokesman for Hamas' military wing, confirmed the group was not
taking credit for the attack - at least yet.
"There may be a later announcement ... But we don't claim this
honor yet," he said.
The family of Alaa Abu Dheim, a 25-year-old from east Jerusalem,
said he had carried out the attack on the seminary, a prestigious
center of Jewish studies identified with the leadership of the
Jewish settlement movement in the West Bank.
They said he was not a member of a militant group and described
him as intensely religious. He had planned to get married in the
summer, the family said.
Abu Dheim had been transfixed in recent days by the news of
bloodshed in Gaza, said his sister, Iman Abu Dheim.
"He told me he wasn't able to sleep because of the grief," she
said.
Abu Dheim's family set up a mourning tent outside their home and
hung green Hamas flags along with one yellow flag of the Lebanese
militant group Hezbollah. Family members said several relatives had
already been taken for questioning by Israeli police.
Israeli defense officials said the gunman came from Jabel
Mukaber in east Jerusalem, where Palestinian residents hold ID
cards giving them freedom of movement in Israel, unlike
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Some Israeli lawmakers called on their government to break off
peace talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' moderate,
West Bank-based government. But an Israeli official said the
negotiations would continue.
Israel will push ahead with talks "so as not to punish moderate
Palestinians for actions by people who are not just our enemies but
theirs as well," the official said, speaking on condition of
anonymity because the government had yet to make an official
announcement.
Mark Regev, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman, said
that the shooting had almost certainly been organized in the West
Bank. He would not confirm nor deny that Israel had reached a
decision to continue peace talks.
Israeli Public Security Minister Avi Dichter told mourners that
Arabs in east Jerusalem who have been involved in militant activity
should be expelled to the West Bank.
The attack was the deadliest in Israel since a suicide bomber
killed 11 people in Tel Aviv on April 17, 2006.
As the gunman fired, students scrambled to flee, jumping out of
windows. Holy books drenched in blood littered the floor. Rosenfeld
said at least six empty bullet clips were found on the floor.
David Simchon, head of the seminary, said the students had been
preparing a celebration for the new month of the Jewish calendar,
which includes the holiday of Purim.
"We were planning to have a Purim party here tonight and
instead we had a massacre," he told Channel 2 TV.
A seminary graduate who is an army officer and lives nearby
rushed into the seminary with his weapon and killed the gunman,
Simchon told Israel Radio.
"He saw the terrorist shooting, and with amazing
resourcefulness he went into one of the rooms and managed to kill
him," he said.
The seminary serves some 400 high school students and young
Israeli soldiers, and many of them carry arms.
Jewish seminarians gathered outside the library and screamed for
revenge, shouting, "Death to Arabs," while in Hamas-controlled
Gaza thousands of Palestinians celebrated in the streets.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who called the attack an
"act of terror and depravity," told Abbas in a phone call Friday
that she would do everything in her power to restore calm as soon
as possible, said Abbas aide Nabil Abu Rdeneh, an aide to Abbas.
Abbas, who condemned the seminary attack, suspended negotiations
this week because of the spike in violence in the Gaza Strip, but
later backed down under pressure from Rice, who was in the region
to push the talks forward.
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Associated Press writers Dalia Nammari in east Jerusalem and
Sarah el Deeb in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, contributed to this report.