JABALIYA, Jan 2: Israeli troops poured into the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday in a bid to halt rocket attacks by Palestinian militants who were rebuked for their tactics by presidential election favourite Mahmud Abbas.

Around 50 tanks and armoured vehicles trundled into the Beit Hanun area near the Erez border crossing between Israel and the Palestinian territory, after a new spate of rocket attacks which wounded at least three Israelis.

The latest incursion, in which two Palestinians were wounded, came just hours after the army withdrew from the Khan Yunis area of southern Gaza where it had been operating to stop militants firing rockets and mortars at nearby Israeli settlements.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has given the military a free hand to put a halt to rocket attacks by Palestinian militant groups. Abbas accused the Israelis of trying to disrupt the January 9 election with its offensives but he later also criticised the militants behind the rocket attacks when he addressed a rally in northern Gaza.

"I say to them: 'This is not the time for this kind of act'," he told 4,000 supporters in Jabaliya, some three miles south of Beit Hanun. "Do not give Israel more reason to attack us," he added.

While Abbas did not single out any particular faction, Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said in a statement it fired three rockets at the southern Israeli town of Sderot early Sunday.

"We promise God and the Palestinian people that we will continue to follow the path of resistance and struggle and we will continue to shell the Zionist settlements until the enemy leaves our land," the statement said.

An Israeli army spokeswoman confirmed that there had been at least two Qassam rockets, named after the Hamas armed wing, fired at Sderot. One woman was slightly wounded, she added.

Two other Israelis were also wounded, one seriously, when a Qassam rocket landed in an industrial zone on the Gaza-Israel border, the army added. Abbas had earlier said the Israelis appeared intent on undermining the election with their offensives.

"The target of this escalation is to put an obstacle in the way of the Palestinian election," he told AFP in Gaza. "The international community must be very careful about what is going on - the democratic process here is being put in danger."

Israel has pledged to assist the holding of a free and fair election next Sunday and has promised its troops will steer clear of Palestinian population centres over a 72-hour period before, during and after the vote.

Sharon's camp was unrepentant, saying there would be no half measures in the efforts to put a halt to the rocket attacks and accusing Abbas of allowing them to take place unhindered.

"We will use so much force that the Qassams will stop," said a source in Sharon's office. "We want a free election for the Palestinians but he (Abbas) has done nothing to stop the firing.

At least he could order the Palestinian security forces to be deployed in the sector where the shooting is taking place even if if they don't exercise force but he has not done nothing. "We cannot understand how he can ask for a free election on the one side and do nothing on the other side." -AFP