LONDON (AFP)---British Foreign Secretary David Miliband denounced the "shocking" shooting at a school in Jerusalem and said the only way to honour the memory of the eight dead was to promote peace.

"The reports tonight of killings at a seminary in Jerusalem are shocking,"
Miliband said in a statement.

He added: "The only way to honour the memory of those who have died is to
build a Middle East free from the power of the gun through a political process
in which the peaceful majority drive out the murderous minority."

Miliband said he had passed on his "deepest condolences" to the Israeli
Foreign Minister and "set out the solidarity of the British people with the
shocked citizens of Israel."

At least eight people were killed on Thursday night when a Palestinian
gunman opened fire inside a yeshiva or Jewish religious school in Jerusalem in an attack threatening peace efforts.

Jerusalem's police chief Aharon Franco said the terrorist  was shot dead by law enforcement forces.

The head of the school, Rabbi Haim Katz, told the press that all the victims were
between 15 and 16 years old.,   

Miliband said the shootings were "an arrow aimed at the heart of the peace
process so recently revived."

"They should and will be deplored by all decent people everywhere. No words
can provide comfort for the families.

In New York, the UN Security Council late Thursday failed to agree on a condemnation of the Jerusalem attack. "We were not able to come to an agreement because the Libyan delegation with the support of two others did not want to condemn this act by itself," US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters at the end of an emergency meeting of the 15-member body.