Jerusalem  - Violence by Israeli settlers in Hebron against local Palestinians last week and over the weekend was a "pogrom" and had to be stopped, acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday.

"I have no other definition for what we saw but a pogrom. We are the sons of a nation which knows what a pogrom is, and I'm saying this after much thought. I have no other way to put it," he was quoted by the Ynet news site as telling his ministers at the start of Sunday's weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.

"As a Jew, I'm ashamed of the sights of Jews firing at Arabs in Hebron," he continued. "I have asked the defence minister and other relevant elements to do all it takes, with all the strength needed and in any place controlled by the State of Israel, in order to stop this phenomenon."

"I hope there will be no more mercy towards the rioters among the settlers," he added.

Hardline Jews in Hebron began rioting Thursday afternoon, violently attacking Palestinians and their property, after police forcibly evacuated scores of settlers from a house they continued to occupy in defiance of a court order.

The settlers had occupied the house in the divided southern West Bank city in early 2007, saying they were the tenants of an American Jew who purchased it and that they have documents proving it. Its Palestinian owner however denies this.

The Israeli supreme court on November 16 ordered the house to be handed over to the state until a lower court rules on its rightful ownership.

But the settlers refused to move, and their numbers were bolstered by right-wing radicals, mostly youth, who flocked to the house in an attempt to prevent its evacuation.

Police cleared the house in an hour on Thursday afternoon. (dpa)