GAN SHMUEL , Israel (AFP) - An Israeli Arab stabbed and wounded four Jews after ramming his car into them near the northern kibbutz of Gan Shmuel on Sunday, police said.

Medics said a 19-year-old woman was left in serious condition, a girl of 14 was moderately wounded and two men aged 20 and 45 were lightly wounded.

Police arrested the suspected assailant unharmed, and identified him as a 20-year-old Arab Israeli from a town in northern Israel.

A photographer at the scene said a yellow Fiat, its windshield smashed, was being examined by security forces for possible explosives.

Sunday's stabbing was the 15th such attack against Jews and Israelis since October 3, but the first by an Israeli Arab to result in wounded victims, after an Arab Israeli woman brandished a knife at security forces who shot her before she could stab anyone.

It comes a short while after a Palestinian teenager was shot dead in a West Bank clash, and hours after a Palestinian mother and her toddler daughter were killed in a retaliatory Israeli air strike on Gaza as the unrest threatens to spiral into a full-scale uprising.