VIDEO: Hamas threatens to execute Israeli prisoners if Israel keeps bombing civilians in Gaza

The Qassam Brigades of Hamas have vowed to execute Israeli prisoners if Israel keeps bombing and killing civilians in Gaza in a live interview with Al Jazeera Arabic on Monday.

“Any targeting of innocent civilians without warning will be met regretfully by executing one of the captives in our custody, and we will be forced to broadcast this execution,” said Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas's Qassam Brigades told Al Jazeera.

“We regret this decision but we hold the Zionist enemy and their leadership the responsibility for this,” he said.

Dubbing its attack "Operation Al-Aqsa Flood", Hamas called on "resistance fighters in the West Bank" and "Arab and Islamic nations" to join the battle.

Its attack comes half a century after the 1973 invasion by Egyptian and Syrian forces, a conflict known in Israel as the Yom Kippur War, and has sparked bitter recriminations for what was widely seen as an intelligence failure.

"There was a very bad failure here," said Sderot resident Yaakov Shoshani, 70. "The Yom Kippur War was small compared to it, and I was a soldier in the Yom Kippur War."

Hamas Chief Ismail Haniyeh has predicted "victory" and vowed to press ahead with "the battle to liberate our land and our prisoners languishing in occupation prisons".

An Israeli survivor of the attack on Sderot, Yitzhak, 67, said he now expected the army to "conquer Gaza house by house, clean the area there properly, and not leave Gaza until they get the very last rocket out of the ground.

"We will defeat terror. We have no other choice. We demand Hamas not to harm any of the hostages. This war crime will not be forgiven," says Israel's Foreign Affairs Minister Eli Cohen on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

In response to Hamas, he further said, "They (Hamas) want to destroy Israel. They received billions of dollars from the world. Any normal people who received billions of dollars from the world would use it to build hospitals, commercial centres, and industrial zones, not to dig tunnels to build a rocket factory, and 12 weapon factories to slaughter people."

Israel-Hamas war continues on the third day with a drastic number of casualties on both sides.