Tel Aviv bus stabbing attack victim. Photo: NRG News.

Israeli police have shot and wounded a Palestinian terrorist who stabbed at least 12 people on board a Tel Aviv bus this morning, local Army radio reported.

“Five people sustained serious to moderate wounds, and four sustained minor wounds,” in the attack on the No. 40 bus, which took place in rush-hour traffic, Police Spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld told reporters in initial comments.

Later reports on Ch. 2 News put the figure at 16 wounded, one critically.

A team of five Prison Service officers, who were driving behind the vehicle as it crossed the Ma’ariv Bridge, noticed the bus’s erratic movement as the driver struggled with and managed to pepper-spray the assailant.

The armed officers, who happened to be en route with prisoners to the city courthouse, chased after the terrorist and shot him in the leg.

“I had just arrived to open my business, and saw the bus stop at the intersection and passengers fleeing the vehicle,” Shlomi, an eyewitness, told Army radio.

“I ran towards the bus and saw police, who must have been chasing the perpetrator,” he said.

“The police fired two shots into the air and began to run. I ran and saw the victims and began to help. Then the police and paramedics arrived.

“There are 20 police cars and 20 ambulances on the scene,” he added.

Police are searching the area for possible accomplices who may have aided the suspect, a 23-year-old Tulkarm resident who was in the country illegally, in reaching the city, police said.

A Hamas official in Qatar, Izzat Risheq, lauded the terror attack, calling it “a brave and heroic act against the Zionists in Tel Aviv.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attack was “the direct result of the poisonous incitement being disseminated by the Palestinian Authority (PA) against the Jews and their state. This same terrorism is trying to attack us in Paris, Brussels, and everywhere.”

“It is Hamas—the partners [of PA President Mahmoud Abbas] in a unity government—who hastened to commend this attack,” said Netanyahu. “This is the same Hamas that announced it will sue Israel at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Abu Mazen (Abbas) is responsible for both the incitement and the dangerous move at the ICC in The Hague.”

Watch a video clip of medics treating passengers immediately in the wake of the attack: