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JERUSALEM — The families of the eight students who were killed by a gunman at a prominent Jewish seminary in Jerusalem on Thursday night buried their dead on Friday as the Israeli authorities tightened security around the city.
The Israeli police named the gunman, who was killed at the scene, as Ala Abu Dhaim, a driver, according to local reports. His family in Arab East Jerusalem said he had once worked as a driver for the seminary, Reuters reported, but the director of the seminary said on Israeli radio that he did not know him and the seminary did not employ Arab drivers.
In a scene of havoc and confusion on Thursday night while the students prayed, the gunman killed two people at the entrance to the Mercaz Harav yeshiva and then entered the first-floor library, spraying the religious students with gunfire from a Kalashnikov rifle, according to the Israeli police.
The dead were aged 15 and 26. At least nine others were injured, three seriously.
The families of the victims bought the eight bodies to the seminary on Friday morning before setting off, at around noon, to bury them at locations inside and outside Jerusalem.
In Gush Etzion, a settlement inside the West Bank, one of the victims of the shooting, Avraham David Moses, 16, whose parents had both moved to Israel from the United States, was buried in a quiet, restrained ceremony attended by several hundred people.
Shaded by trees, the mourners carried the small body up to the grave on a stretcher covered in a black and white prayer shawl. The victim’s young siblings gathered around the grave and helped throw soil onto the body.
“He was a really good kid,” said his stepmother, Leha Moses, who grew up in New Jersey and who said she had lived in Israel for 12 years. “He was just an incredible blessing,” she said.
Members of the family said the boy’s mother, Rivka Moriah, was originally from New England and his father, Naftali Moses, was from Long Island, and both had moved to Israel several years ago. Both had subsequently remarried.
The attack on Thursday was the deadliest on Israeli civilians in nearly two years and the first attack inside Jerusalem in four. It occurred at the start of the Hebrew month in which the Purim holiday occurs, and many of the witnesses at first thought the gunfire was firecrackers in celebration at the 84-year-old institute, an ideological base for the settler movement.
Only one gunman appeared to be involved.
The Israeli police named the gunman, who was killed at the scene, as Ala Abu Dhaim, a driver, according to local reports. His family in Arab East Jerusalem said he had once worked as a driver for the seminary, Reuters reported, but the director of the seminary said on Israeli radio that he did not know him and the seminary did not employ Arab drivers.
In a scene of havoc and confusion on Thursday night while the students prayed, the gunman killed two people at the entrance to the Mercaz Harav yeshiva and then entered the first-floor library, spraying the religious students with gunfire from a Kalashnikov rifle, according to the Israeli police.
The dead were aged 15 and 26. At least nine others were injured, three seriously.
The families of the victims bought the eight bodies to the seminary on Friday morning before setting off, at around noon, to bury them at locations inside and outside Jerusalem.
In Gush Etzion, a settlement inside the West Bank, one of the victims of the shooting, Avraham David Moses, 16, whose parents had both moved to Israel from the United States, was buried in a quiet, restrained ceremony attended by several hundred people.
Shaded by trees, the mourners carried the small body up to the grave on a stretcher covered in a black and white prayer shawl. The victim’s young siblings gathered around the grave and helped throw soil onto the body.
“He was a really good kid,” said his stepmother, Leha Moses, who grew up in New Jersey and who said she had lived in Israel for 12 years. “He was just an incredible blessing,” she said.
Members of the family said the boy’s mother, Rivka Moriah, was originally from New England and his father, Naftali Moses, was from Long Island, and both had moved to Israel several years ago. Both had subsequently remarried.
The attack on Thursday was the deadliest on Israeli civilians in nearly two years and the first attack inside Jerusalem in four. It occurred at the start of the Hebrew month in which the Purim holiday occurs, and many of the witnesses at first thought the gunfire was firecrackers in celebration at the 84-year-old institute, an ideological base for the settler movement.
Only one gunman appeared to be involved.