Jerusalem synagogue attack – live updates

AFP has more graphic accounts of the attacks from witnesses.

“There were people running from the synagogue, and a man sitting on the pavement covered in blood, it looked like he has been stabbed,” said local resident Sarah Abrahams, who was walking past when it happened.

“Two people came out with their faces half missing, looking like they’d been attacked with knives,” she said as hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews pressed up against the police tape, a few chanting “Death to terrorists.”

Fighting back tears, Moshe Eliezer said he had narrowly avoided being at the scene after oversleeping.

“This is a yeshiva community. Ninety percent don’t serve in the army. We’re not violent,” he said.

Details are emerging about the suspects.

Police said the attackers were two cousins from the east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Jabal Mukaber.

Speaking to journalists at the scene, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat expressed shock at the scale of the bloodshed.

“To slaughter innocent people while they pray... it’s insane,” he said.

AFP also confirms that Hamas praised assault as a response to the death earlier this week of a Palestinian bus driver from east Jerusalem who was found hanged inside his vehicle.

“The operation in Jerusalem is a response to the murder of the martyr Yusuf Ramuni and to the series of crimes by the occupier at Al-Aqsa,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement.

“Hamas calls for more operations like it.”