Four Israeli Arabs were killed and ten others injured when an armed Jewish settler opened fire on passengers aboard a bus in northern Israel Thursday afternoon.

The attacker, later identified as Eden Tzuberi, 19, was killed by survivors, Israeli sources reported Thursday evening.

The incident took place in mid afternoon in a Druze neighborhood of the Israeli Arab town of Shafa Amr.

Medical sources said three of the wounded were listed in critical conditions.

According to police sources, the settler, who came from the West Bank settlement of Tapuah, had a brief scuffle with passengers after which he opened fire on them, killing three and wounding ten others.

The sources said the man was dressed in the Israeli army uniform.

The same sources described the incident as a terrorist act, adding that the attacker was a newly religious man, apparently a soldier, who recently joined the Kach terrorist group.

It is not clear if the incident is related to protests by Israeli settlers and their right-wing allies against the planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli intelligence and security establishment has been warning that right-wing extremists may well carry out attacks on Israeli Arab citizens or Palestinians in the West Bank for the purpose of foiling the withdrawal.

Following the incident, police deployed more forces in Shafa Amr in an effort to forestall possible riots.

The attack has been strongly condemned by the leaders of the Arab minority in Israel, which makes up to 22% of Israel's total population.

Mohammad Baraka, a member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, condemned the "terrorist attack."

"We are witnessing attempts by extreme right-wing people, terrorists, who want to set the region ablaze and feel they have freedom of action in light of the behavior of the security, political and judicial establishment," Baraka told the Israeli radio.

Stronger words came from Arab Knesset member Ahmed Teibi who called the incident “a real carnage."

"This is the inevitable outcome of years of racist and fascist incitement against every thing and anything Arab."

Teibi, in a telephone interview with PIC, lambasted Israeli officials and settler leaders who have argued that the incident was isolated and didn't represent a phenomenon.

"You see, these forces of darkness have become a central current among Jews in Israel. The fascists simply moved from the streets to the Knesset to become ministers and government officials," he said.

Teibi said the settler gunman was inculcated with hatred for Arabs and Muslim, adding that what he did was a natural outcome of a fascist indoctrination.

"This settler epitomizes a large and widespread culture in Israel the foundation of which is hatred for every thing Arab. He saw how the police shot 13 Arab citizens in October 2000 and how the killers remained free, so he has done the same thing, thinking that an Arab can be killed with impunity."

A statement by the Yesha Council, which represents Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, described the incident as "an act of a madman."

Jewish settlers, indoctrinated in the Talmudic ideology and Messianic Zionism, have killed scores of Palestinian civilians.

In 1994, a Jewish settler by the name of Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Arab worshipers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in downtown Hebron.

Goldstein is revered by most Jewish settlers as a great here and saint.