© AFP/File Jack Guez

JERUSALEM (AFP) - (AFP) - Seven people were wounded early Monday when a Palestinian crashed a stolen taxi into a group of border guards outside a Tel Aviv nightclub, then attacked them with a knife, police said.

Four border guards and two would-be club goers were hurt in the attack which took place outside HaOman 17 nightclub in south Tel Aviv, police spokeswoman Luba Samri told AFP, saying one was critically injured and two others were in serious condition.

"At 1:40 am the attacker, a young man of 20 from (the northern West Bank city of) Nablus, stole a taxi in Tel Aviv," Samri told AFP, saying the taxi driver had been lightly wounded in the hand when he was dragged out of his car.

"He then rammed a group of border police who were standing in front of HaOman 17, injuring two of them," she said.

"Then he got out of the car and attacked passers-by and the border guards with a knife, injuring another four people -- two of them border guards -- while shouting 'Allahu Akbar' (God is greatest)," she added.

The attacker sustained light injuries as he was subdued, and was taken for interrogation by the Shin Bet internal security agency, she said.

"The police have been in a state of very high alert and have increased the number of patrols across the country since the attacks north of Eilat," she said, referring to a series of attacks by gunmen on August 18 which killed eight Israelis on a desert road near the Red Sea resort town.

The United States condemned "in strongest terms (the)... brutal attacks on innocent civilians in Tel Aviv," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

"Attacks against innocent civilians in Israel or anywhere else are never justified. We again remind all parties that violence will not advance, but will impede the hope for peace between Israel and the Palestinians," she said.

Official Palestinian news agency WAFA quoted a statement from president Mahmud Abbas's office as condemning the attack.

"The presidency condemns aggression directed at civilians, including the incident that was carried out in Tel Aviv this morning," it said.

Official Palestinian silence over the Eilat attack sparked widespread Israeli criticism at the time.

Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch said on Monday that the Tel Aviv attack appeared to be the work of an individual acting alone and not that of a militant group.

"We call it the lone attacker scenario," he told public radio. "As far as I know at this moment it's not a network but a person, a terrorist who took the initiative, for whatever motive, and went and carried out an attack."

Defence Minister Ehud Barak, however, linked the incident to the Palestinians' plan to seek United Nations membership next month, which Israeli officials fear may be accompanied by waves of unrest.

"We experienced this morning a stabbing and running-down almost at the start of the month of September," a statement from his office quoted him as saying. "The Shin Bet, the police and the military will be deployed in order not to allow attackers to disrupt normal life in Tel Aviv or in our (other) cities."

Security forces were on alert for a possible repeat of the desert attacks, he said.

"We are also on high alert this morning in the south, facing a possible attack, similar in some of its aspects to the attack which took place 10 days ago," he said.

"The responsibility is from Gaza and in Gaza," he said. "Not just with the Islamic Jihad, but also Hamas and all the other forces."

Military Chief of Staff Benny Gantz has beefed up the number of troops along the border with Egypt's Sinai peninsula and with the Gaza Strip in a bid to thwart any further attacks, a military spokesman told AFP.