A gunman entered a prominent Jewish seminary in Jerusalem tonight and began firing on students, killing at least eight and wounding at least nine others, The New York Times reported, citing police reports. The gunman killed two people at the entrance to the Mercaz Harav yeshiva and then fired on students in the library. The dead were thought to be mostly between 20 and 30 years of age.

The gunman, who has not been identified, was killed at the scene, and his motivation was unknown. In Gaza, the radical Islamic movement Hamas did not take responsibility for the attack, but said: “We bless the operation. It will not be the last.”

The yeshiva, an elite institution founded in 1924 by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, has about 400 students. According to the Times, it is famous as a symbol of the national religious strain of Judaism that provides the backbone of the settler movement. —Charles Huckabee