JERUSALEM: Thousands of Israelis gathered outside a bullet-scarred Jerusalem rabbinical seminary on Friday to begin funeral processions for eight students killed by a Palestinian gunman in a night-time attack on the library where they were studying.

A bearded rabbi recited Hebrew psalms line by line, the crowd repeating after him, in memory of the dead students, one of them 26 years old and the rest teenagers between 15 and 19. People packed nearby balconies to observe the ceremony, after which the bodies were taken for burial.

The seminary's library was crowded for a night-time study session when the Palestinian opened fire. Students scrambled to flee the attack, jumping out of windows, and holy books drenched in blood littered the floor. It was the first major attack in Jerusalem in four years, and the deadliest incident in Israel since a suicide bomber killed 11 people in Tel Aviv on April 17, 2006.