"Residents of Sderot, stop your army's crimes and get it out of Beit Hanun, or else you will be the ones paying the price," said one of three masked gunmen on the footage aired by the Dubai-based satellite channel Al-Arabiya.

"We have decided to send you Qassam rockets to whatever place you thought was safe. We have prepared rockets that can reach wherever we want ... and we will continue to bombard you daily," he said, reading from a prepared statement.

The gunman, standing with two other masked men among a number of rockets and launchers, recalled that the Israeli army had reoccupied Beit Hanun "on the pretext of stopping the Qassam rockets".

"But it has destroyed crops and houses ... and killed dozens of people," without succeeding in halting the rocket attacks, he said.

Israeli troops poured back into Beit Hanun in late June after a makeshift Qassam rocket fired by Hamas for the first time killed two Israelis in Sderot.

Reuters adds: An explosion killed three Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip yesterday as militants clashed with Israeli troops and tanks on a raid to find weapons-smuggling tunnels.

Witnesses and Israel's army said the blast appeared to be from a bomb that militants were trying to detonate against Israeli troops in Rafah, a militant stronghold near the Egyptian border and scene of frequent clashes.

Two of the dead were militants. The third was an off-duty policeman who owned a shop in Rafah.

At least 15 people were wounded, including a Reuters cameraman, who was hit in the hand by shrapnel.