Religious Jews plot revenge attack: Israeli TV

Ultra-nationalist religious Jews have planned a revenge attack after a Palestinian gunman killed eight students at their school in Jerusalem last week, Israeli public television reported Tuesday.

Two influential rabbis, including one from the targeted Merkaz Harav religious school, met with a group of former students who have combat experience from their military service, the TV station said. It claimed to have the names of the rabbis.

One of the envisaged revenge targets was allegedly an Arab figure linked to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem's old city, known as Al-Haram Al-Sharif to Muslims and Islam's third holiest site after Mecca and Medina.

Last Thursday, Alaa Hisham Abu Dheim, 25, of the Jabal al-Mukaber area of occupied east Jerusalem was shot down after he killed eight teenagers at the school in predominantly Jewish west Jerusalem.

Hamas initially claimed its members carried out the killings, but then withdrew the claim saying it was based on "confused information".

The Merkaz Harav school issued a statement denying the television report and "any involvement by one of its students or its rabbis in such a plan."

It added: "The information is without foundation. The proof is that there have not been any arrests."

The school said it reserved the right to bring a defamation suit against Israeli public television.

Israeli police, when contacted by AFP, said they had no specific information concerning any revenge attack.

"In general, in the past, the eventuality of an act of vengeance after a particularly deadly attack has always been taken into account. But we do not have any specific information of that kind right now," Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP.

The Merkaz Harav Yeshiva is considered the centre of Israeli religious nationalism, where the Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faith) settler movement was born after the 1967 Six Day War.