Jerusalem synagogue attack leaves six dead Six people are dead after an attack on a Jerusalem synagogue by armed men on Tuesday that marked the bloodiest incident yet in more than four months of unrest in the divided city. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, condemned the attack but Hamas, the militant group against which Israel fought a war this summer in the Gaza Strip, praised it. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, after a meeting of his security cabinet on Tuesday afternoon, ordered the demolition of the homes of the two men who carried out the attacks and said that enforcement against those who incited "terrorist attacks" would be significantly increased. Just after 7am on Tuesday two Palestinian men entered the crowded Kehilat Bnei Torah synagogue in Har Nof, an ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood northwest of the city centre, wielding knives, axes and a pistol and attacked worshippers inside. Four men, all rabbis, were killed and eight other people wounded. Israeli police said that three of those killed held dual US-Israeli citizenship and one was a dual UK-Israeli citizen. The two men who carried out the attack, both of whom were from the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Jabal al-Mukaber, were killed in a gun battle outside the synagogue. The attack shocked Israelis and was unusual in that it took place in a west Jerusalem neighbourhood inside Israel's internationally recognised border and not in the Israeli-occupied east that has seen regular protests by Palestinian children and teenagers. Police said they planned to station more officers in public places in western neighbourhoods in response. Israel has deployed 1,000 additional police, drones, helicopters, and other assets in recent weeks to contain unrest in the Arab east of the city. The unrest began in July with the lynching of a Palestinian teenager in East Jerusalem in revenge for the kidnapping of three Jewish Israeli boys in the West Bank, who were later found murdered. "Until now we had police deployed in East Jerusalem responding to local disturbances," said Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman. Now we are focusing on other areas of the city - public places, light rail stops and so on. Over the past month, five Israelis and a foreign visitor to Jerusalem have been run over deliberately or stabbed by Palestinians, and about a dozen Palestinians have been killed by the security forces, including the men accused of carrying out the attacks. The synagogue attack will raise concerns in the region and abroad about the religious overtones that increasingly mark Israeli-Palestinian violence around Jerusalem and at the Haram al-Sharif, site of the al-Aqsa mosque, known among Jewish Israelis as the Temple Mount. Extremist Israeli politicians are calling for a reversal of the status quo that prohibits Jewish prayer at the site. John Kerry, US secretary of state, called the attack an "act of pure terror" and urged Palestinian leaders to condemn it "in the most powerful terms." Mr Abbas deplored "the killing of worshippers in a house of God in west Jerusalem." But he also called for a halt on Israeli "raids into al-Aqsa," a reference to clashes at the site provoked by visits or statements by extremist Israeli lawmakers that have inflamed emotions in the Palestinian territories and elsewhere in the Arab world. Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, praised the attack and said it was "a reaction to the occupation's crimes in al-Aqsa." The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, another Palestinian militant faction active in Gaza, also praised the attack and said it was "a reaction against the crimes of the occupation in Jerusalem." Mr Netanyahu accused Mr Abbas, whose Fatah movement sits in a unity government with Hamas, of "incitement" that fomented the unrest that led to the attack. "We will respond with a heavy hand to the brutal murder of Jews who came to pray and were met by reprehensible murderers," he said. In Jabal al-Mukaber residents said Israeli police using stun grenades, tear gas and foam-tipped bullets swooped on the neighbourhood at about 9:30am and arrested about 20 family members of Ghassan Abu Jamal, a supermarket worker, and his cousin Udayy, who worked in a restaurant, who carried out the attack. Udayy's uncle, who identified himself as Abu Salah, held up pictures of the two men and said the attack and their subsequent deaths was "because of the incitement by Netanyahu and his government on a daily basis." "Because of the attacks of the settlers, they felt like they needed to take revenge for the martyrs," said Maysa Abu Jamal, a cousin of the two men who said she ran home from her job at a kindergarten after hearing of the attack. All these people only wanted to defend Jerusalem, to defend al-Aqsa, to defend the homeland. People are sacrificing themselves for Jerusalem.