Jerusalem, March 7 (Reuters): A Palestinian gunman shot dead at least eight persons at a Jewish religious school in Jerusalem, but Israel said the killings would not derail US-sponsored peace talks.

“It was a slaughterhouse,” Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, head of the Zaka emergency service, said of the scene last night at the Merkaz Harav seminary, one of the city’s most prominent Jewish educational centres.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The attack was greeted with celebrations in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip after a recent Israeli offensive there that killed more than 120 Palestinians, about half of them civilians. “Tonight’s massacre in Jerusalem is a defining moment. Those celebrating these murders have shown themselves to be the enemies not only of Israel, but the enemies of peace and reconciliation,” said Mark Regev, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s spokesman.

Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said peace talks would continue with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who denounced the shooting. The attack, which could further complicate US efforts to broker a statehood deal by the end of 2008, followed a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who persuaded Abbas to resume peace talks he suspended over the bloody Gaza assault.

Witnesses said the gunman entered the crowded seminary and fired an automatic weapon at students in its library before he was shot dead by an off-duty army officer. Jerusalem police chief Aharon Franco said the attacker had used a cardboard box to hide his gun.

Emergency worker Yerach Tucker said bloodied students ran out of the seminary. “I went into the library and there were youngsters lying there, dead with Bibles — with holy books in their hands,” Tucker said. In addition to those killed, at least 10 people were wounded, three of them seriously, emergency workers said. It was the highest Israeli death toll since April 17, 2006, when 11 people were killed in a suicide bombing during the Passover holiday in Tel Aviv.