Emergency personnel stand near a bus after it was ambushed north of Eilat Jerusalem – Sona El Deek   Channel 10 TV reported a fourth attack, but there was no official confirmation or details. The military said a "large number" of assailants were working in multiple squads. "We are talking about a terror squad that infiltrated into Israel," said Israeli military spokeswoman Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich. "This is a combined terrorist attack against Israelis."
The attacks began around midday on Thursday and lasted for about three hours, news agencies reported.
TV footage showed the bus pulled over by a red rocky cliff. Windows and a door of the bus were shattered, and soldiers were patrolling the area on foot.
Inside the bus, seats were stained with blood and luggage littered the aisle.
"I was talking to someone sitting next to me and we heard gunshots and we immediately bent over and then we realized there were people injured," a young woman riding the bus told Channel 2 TV. She did not give her name.
The bus driver interviewed by Channel 2 did not provide details of the attack but appeared calm, smoking a cigarette in the driver's seat.
Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, said the Israeli army was assessing the security situation in the area and vowed to "hunt down" the perpetrators of Thursday's attack, according to Army Radio.
Barak held Gazans responsible for Thursday's attacks, prompting military analysts to expect a harsh Israeli military reaction against the occupied Gaza Strip, reports said.
Yoav Mordechai, the Israeli army spokesman, said that Israeli forces were "in control of the situation and enforcing order".
Ahmad Yousef, a senior Hamas leader in Gaza, denied the group's responsibility for the Eilat attacks, though he said Hamas "praises the attack since it attacked [Israeli] soldiers and came in the right time while Israel is attacking Gaza almost every day".
"Since the whole political process is frozen, military escalation is the logical development," Yousef replied to Barak's threat against Gaza.
Eilat is "a tactical choice for attacks because the resistance groups look for suitable places and times for their attacks," he told Al Jazeera, on why southern Israel may have been the target.
Israel has so far managed to construct a barrier along 45 kilometers of it's southern border with Egypt, which stretches for over 200 km.
The original plan was to complete construction of the fence in 2013 but the Defense Ministry decided several months ago to hire six different contracts in order to speed up the construction and complete the project by the end of 2012.
The Defense Ministry said it would complete construction of an additional 100 km by the end of 2011. Officials said that 700 meters of fence was constructed on a daily basis.
Following the attacks near Eilat on Thursday, Defense Ministry Dir.-Gen. Udi Shani convened a meeting to discuss ways to increase the number of workers who work on the fence in an effort to move up the completion date.
Authorities set up an emergency telephone number for those affected by the attacks near Eilat: 1255175.