A Palestinian gunman kills seven people in a synagogue attack in east Jerusalem.

During the Jewish Sabbath on Friday, a Palestinian gunman killed seven people outside an east Jerusalem synagogue during one of the deadliest attacks targeting Israelis in years that risked widespread violence.

The shooting occurred a day after a significant escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including an army raid in the occupied West Bank that killed nine people, rocket fire from Gaza, and Israeli retaliatory strikes.

Israel’s police chief Kobi Shabtai called the shooting in the Neve Yaakov area “one of the worst attacks we have encountered in recent years.” It also fell on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

According to the police, “at about 8:15 pm (1815 GMT), a terrorist entered a synagogue on Jerusalem’s Neve Yaakov Boulevard and started firing at a number of people in the area.”

According to police, “seven civilians were declared dead as a result of the terror attack, and three additional civilians were injured.”

They claimed that after driving away from the scene, the shooter was quickly apprehended by police, who engaged him in an “exchange of fire,” and he was killed.

Police have determined that the shooter is a Palestinian who lives in east Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after the 1967 Six-Day War.

A month after the installation of a new government under the leadership of seasoned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, violence has escalated.

On Friday, as demonstrators chanted “death to Arabs,” Netanyahu and his far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the scene, according to AFP journalists there.