In a rare audio message broadcast on Tuesday, Hamas’s top military commander warned the Zionist entity will "pay a heavy price" if it launches a ground operation in the Gaza Strip.

In a rare audio message broadcast on Tuesday, Hamas's top military commander warned the Zionist entity will "pay a heavy price" if it launches a ground operation in the Gaza Strip.

"The enemy will pay a heavy price if it thinks of entering Gaza," Mohammad Deif said in the audio message carried by Hamas television station Al-Aqsa.

"A ground war is the best hope of freeing the prisoners," Deif said, implying that militants would seek to capture Zionist soldiers in order to bring about a prisoner swap deal as they did last year with the Zionist Gilad Shalit.

Deif is the head of Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, a position he assumed in 2002, after the previous commander Saleh Shehadeh was killed in a massive Zionist air strike.

In 2006, Deif was badly wounded in another air strike committed by enemy killing machine.

He subsequently went underground, leaving most field duties to Ahmed Jaabari, his second-in-command, who was martyred in a Zionist targeted assassination on November 14 which sparked the current cycle of brutality.