ACTIVISTS and observers have condemned Israel for killing 13 people earlier today in an indiscriminate bombing of occupied Gaza.

Palestinian health officials said the dead included resistance fighters as well as women and children.

Some 40 aircraft reportedly carried out the deadly bombing attacks in densely populated residential areas. This included a strike on the top floor of an apartment building in Gaza City and a house in the southern town of Rafah. 

A further air strike was reported against the town of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said 20 people were also wounded in the brutal attack.

Air strikes continued into the early hours of Tuesday morning, targeting what Israel referred to as “militant training sites.”

The Israelis said they had targeted and killed three senior commanders of the militant Islamic Jihad group in the raid who they claimed had been responsible for recent rocket fire towards Israel.

The three have been identified as Khalil Bahtini, the Islamic Jihad commander for northern Gaza Strip; Tareq Izzeldeen, the group’s intermediary between its Gaza and West Bank members; and Jehad Ghanam, the secretary of Islamic Jihad’s military council.

There has been no mention by Israeli authorities of the 10 others slaughtered in the attack. 

Ben Jamal, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), was among a number of activists and observers who slammed the Israeli attack.

Mr Jamal said: “Israel’s latest assault on Gaza which has killed 13 including four children is indefensible and clearly designed by Netanyahu to quell internal criticism of his far-right coalition.  

He added: “These deaths are the latest threads woven in the tapestry of the ongoing Palestinian Nakba, now in its 75th year, which thousands will be marking by marching in London on Saturday.”

Mr Jamal was referring to the PSC march and rally set for central London on May 13.

The event marks the resistance to the continuing ethnic cleansing, colonisation and dispossession that saw over 750,000 Palestinians driven into exile in 1948 and more than 500 towns and villages wiped from the map.

Palestinians mark the Nakba not just as an historical event but as a continuing process of oppression by the ongoing colonisation of land, enforcement of apartheid and military occupation by the Israelis.

Former Palestinian peace negotiator Dr Hanan Ashrawi called the latest Israeli assault “extrajudicial executions” which were “compounding a horrific crime.”

At midday today, tens of thousands of people took part in two funerals, where at least 10 of the victims were being mourned in one funeral in Gaza City. 

Mourners carried the bodies, which lay on stretchers, on their shoulders to ambulances. 

Children’s coffins were carried next to those of their parents.

In anticipation of retaliation by the Palestinians the Israeli military advised residents of communities within 25 miles of Gaza to stay close to designated bomb shelters.

Israel’s Home Front command ordered the closure of schools, beaches and highways in cities and towns in southern Israel, and limited public gatherings.

The Russian diplomatic delegation in Ramallah, in the West Bank, said that one of the men killed, Jamal Khuswan, was a Russian national, and that his wife and son were also killed. 

Mr Khuswan was a dentist who lived downstairs from Izzeldeen in Gaza City.

Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said in a statement that Israeli forces had “conducted a precise operation against the leadership of the Islamic Jihad terror organisation in Gaza.

“The State of Israel seeks stability in the region, while the Iranian-funded terror group launches attacks.”

He added: “The State of Israel will not tolerate rocket fire, terrorism or any threats to the sovereignty of our state and security of our citizens.” 

Mr Gallant later told municipal leaders in southern Israel that “we must be prepared for every eventuality, including a prolonged campaign and widening ranges of fire.”

But the Israeli air strikes were condemned by Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh, Jordan’s foreign ministry and the Egyptian government, which often mediates between Israel and Palestinian militant groups in the Gaza Strip.

Tor Wennesland, the United Nations envoy to the Mideast, said he was “deeply alarmed” and condemned the civilian deaths, calling on all sides “to exercise maximum restraint.”

Dawood Shahab, an Islamic Jihad official, warned that there would be a “unified Palestinian response” to the strikes at a time and place of its choosing.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh promised that Israel will “pay the price” for the killings. 

“Assassinating the leaders with a treacherous operation will not bring security to the occupier, but rather more resistance,” Mr Haniyeh, who lives in exile, said in a statement.

Islamic Jihad and Hamas are both Iranian-backed groups that oppose Israel's existence and possess large arsenals of rockets and other weapons.

Islamic Jihad fired dozens of rockets into Israel last week after one of its members in the West Bank died from a hunger strike while in custody.

The air strikes came at a time of boiling tensions between Israel and Palestinians as the occupying forces continue to carry out near daily raids on local communities.

Israel says the raids in the West Bank are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart future attacks. The Palestinians see the attacks as further entrenchment of Israel's 56-year, open-ended occupation of lands they seek for a future independent state.

So far, 105 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the start of 2023. 

At least 20 people have been killed in Palestinian attacks on Israel in the same period.