Israeli Police Hunt Attackers of 2 Students

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered his security chiefs Thursday to make it their top priority to find the attackers of two Jewish seminary students who were shot in an ambush in the Old City’s Muslim quarter.

Authorities suspected Palestinian militants were behind the early morning shooting, which killed one student and seriously wounded the other Thursday.

“We cannot accept . . . an attack in the Old City, in the heart of the capital of Israel,” the prime minister said.

A spokesman for the seminary that the students attended suggested that it will retaliate by pushing Jewish settlement in traditionally Arab East Jerusalem.

“The Arabs will pay for the attack for many years to come,” seminary spokesman Matti Dan said.

The students were ambushed shortly after midnight as they walked through a narrow alley in the Muslim quarter on the way to their dormitory.

One or more gunmen crouching behind a low wall in the alley opened fire with assault rifles, felling one student with a shot to the leg, police said.

The attackers shot 26-year-old Gabriel Hirschberg, a Hungarian immigrant, six more times as he lay on the ground, killing him.

Three more bullets hit the second student, who managed to run hundreds of feet to a group of Israeli border police officers guarding the home of Infrastructure Minister Ariel Sharon.

The student, seriously wounded, was hospitalized.