The UN Security Council is to hold urgent consultations on the Middle East Thursday night in the wake of the Jerusalem attack which killed eight people, UN spokesperson Marie Okabe said.

Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, the current president of the Security Council, has scheduled urgent consultations at 7 P.M. (0000 GMT Friday) among the 15-member panel on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question, said Okabe.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon has condemned "in the strongest terms today's savage attack on a Jewish seminary in west Jerusalem, and the deliberate killing and injuring of civilians."

At least eight Israeli students were killed in a gun battle in Merkaz Harav yeshiva in the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood in Jerusalem on Thursday.

(Xinhua News Agency March 7, 2008)