Anti-Semitic graffiti, including swastikas and references to the Nazi gas chambers, has been spray-painted on the walls of a Jewish high school in the US state of Washington. The epithets in orange, blue and gray paint on the Northwest Yeshiva High School on Mercer Island were daubed late on Thursday last week and discovered the following morning, on the eve of Yom Kippur.

The graffiti covered most of the building's outer wall, including on the second floor. Neighborhood residents helped the school to clean off the graffiti before Yom Kippur services were held in the school's sanctuary. Police took the school's security tapes in an attempt to identify the vandals.

"It's a kick in the gut," Rabbi Yechezkel Kornfeld told the ‘Seattle Times’, adding: "I have been here for 35 years, and... we have never had an incident like this. Whoever it is, I hope they eventually realize what they did and change their ways."