At 7:01 this morning, the ritual hum of morning prayers in a Jerusalem synagogue was jarringly interrupted when two Palestinian terrorists stormed the sacred house armed with guns, axes and a meat cleaver. They murdered four Jews and injured eight others [update: A police officer later died from his wounds, bringing the total to five killed.]

The savage rampage lasted seven minutes as the terrorists went from room to room striking as many people as they could. “I saw people lying on the floor, blood everywhere,” said one of those inside during the attack. “People were trying to fight with the attackers, but they didn’t have much of a chance.”

Another eyewitness, Sarah Abrams, was out on her morning walk when she heard a commotion from the direction of the synagogue. “There were people running from the synagogue and a man sitting on the pavement covered in blood; it looked like he had been stabbed. Two people came out with their faces half missing, looking like they’d been attacked with knives.”

Eventually, police arrived at the synagogue, located in the West Jerusalem ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Har Nof, and killed the terrorists in a shootout.

“The scene was very complex and difficult,” said a spokesman for the Israeli Identification, Extraction and Rescue volunteers, who first entered the grisly scene. “People were lying dead with their tefillin and prayer shawls,” indicating they were praying as they were attacked.

This brazen onslaught is the worst terrorist attack since 2008. At that time, a lone terrorist sprayed a gathering at a Jerusalem yeshiva with AK-47 rounds, murdering eight students.

In Tuesday’s attack, the two terrorists, Rasan and Oudiai abu Jamal, cousins from an East Jerusalem neighborhood, did not fire indiscriminately into a crowd of worshipers. Rather, they ran up to the victims, shooting them “in the head from point-blank range,” said a former army infantryman who was inside the synagogue during the attack.

The attackers were reportedly affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, according to Israel Hayom, although no terrorist group has claimed the attack.

While many world leaders quickly denounced the horrific act perpetrated against the Jews, almost as horrid as the attack itself was the reporting by Western media outlets. In what could only be a serious mistake, cnn displayed the headline “Deadly Attack on Jerusalem Mosque” while interviewing Mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat.

https://twitter.com/HonestReporting/status/534648608620945409

cbc News, based out of Canada, first tweeted the breaking news by reporting only that Jerusalem police shot two people after an “apparent synagogue attack,” failing to mention the Jews killed by the terrorists.

https://twitter.com/CBCNews/status/534591148233601025?lang=en

More of the international media’s failings were collected by HonestReporting.

This deadly terrorist attack in Har Nof is just the latest event in the ratcheting up of tension and violence in Jerusalem over the past three months. For more information, read “A Third Intifada in Jerusalem—Happening Now?”