Mourning Prayers

Attackers armed with cleavers and guns killed four rabbis (three American, one British) during morning prayers in a Jerusalem synagogue. Seven other people were hospitalized and the two attackers were killed by police. The incident both intensifies and widens the recent conflicts that have taken place near the Temple Mount. “The brutal nature of the attack, the shock of such a strike on a house of prayer and the fact that the episode took place in a part of western Jerusalem considered far removed from recent clashes boded ill for any calming of violence that has roiled Jerusalem for months.”

+ The Guardian is tracking the latest developments from an increasingly unsettled Jerusalem.