One medic arrived at the scene as gunfire was still being exchanged.

"The terrorist was shooting at us. We all hide under the cars, under the buses that were here.

"When we got in after the police guys sterilised the place, there was a terrible scene.

"We saw young guys, 15-, 16-year-old guys lying on the floor with their Bibles in their hands, all dead on the floor because the terrorist guys went inside the place and killed those eight or nine young guys who were only here learning in Jerusalem."

'Slaughterhouse'

Yehuda Meshi Zahav, head of the Zaka rescue service, entered the library after the attack.

"The whole building looked like a slaughterhouse," he told the Associated Press news agency. "The floor was covered in blood. The students were in class at the time of the attack.

"The floors are littered with holy books covered in blood."...

The fatalities were named as Yochai Lipschitz, 18, of Jerusalem; Yonatan Yitzchak Eldar, 16, of Shiloh; Yonadav Chaim Hirschfeld, 19, of Kochav Hashahar; Neriah Cohen, 15, of Jerusalem; Roey Roth, 18, of Elkana; Segev Pniel Avihayil, 15, of Neveh Daniel; Avraham David Moses, 16, of Efrat; and Maharata Trunoch, 26, of Ashdod.

...By early morning yesterday FRI the family's compound had been turned into a funeral tent for Abu Idheim with plastic chairs lined up to receive mourners and flags of resistance movements hostile to Israeli flapping in the early spring breeze.

There were the green flags of Hamas, the militant Palestinian group, a yellow one symbolising Hizbollah, the Lebanese shia group, and a single, stark black flag to represent mourning.

Significantly, nobody in the family was willing to answer press questions about Abu Idheim. Normally, the families of suicide bombers speak openly about their dead family member and association with whichever militant group.

Nobody in the Abu Idheim family or his neighbours was willing to speak which suggested his was not a standard terrorist act commissioned by a standard Palestinian militant group...