Men carrying AK-47s, their faces shielded by black balaclavas, lined the entrance to the stage and the militant group’s black and yellow flag flew overhead. The neighborhood had gathered to mourn five-year-old Alaa Qaddoum, one of the first victims of Operation Breaking Dawn – a surprise campaign of Israeli airstrikes targeting Islamic Jihad, the second largest militant group in the Gaza Strip after Hamas. The Israeli military said Alaa’s father, Abdullah, is a senior Islamic Jihad commander, but did not comment on whether he was the target of Friday’s attack that killed her. He was seriously injured in the attack, along with his seven-year-old brother Alaa. The Israeli military said it was aware of the five-year-old’s death and that civilian casualties would be investigated. A 60-year-old civilian sitting on the steps of a mosque and an Islamic Jihad fighter on a motorbike were also killed on Friday afternoon in the opening attack of Israel’s three-day offensive. The motorcyclist was named by Islamic Jihad as Yusuf Qaddoum, a distant relative of Alaa. Qaddoum family textbooks. Photo: Bethan McKernan “They were targeting the motorbike, but it was obvious there were children and people in the mosque,” said Alaa’s grandfather Riad, gesturing at shrapnel marks and streaks of dried blood where the girl died. “The rest of the road was empty. They could wait.” According to Gaza’s health ministry, 44 people, including 15 children and several members of Islamic Jihad, were killed and 350 civilians injured as rockets hit the blockaded Palestinian territory before an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire took effect late on Sunday. Sixty people in southern Israel were treated for minor injuries as hundreds of rockets were fired across the Gaza border into the country’s south. Unlike other Israeli airstrikes on residential areas of the strip, which since 2014 have often been accompanied by phone calls ordering residents to evacuate in advance, Breaking Dawn began without warning. Alaa’s mother, Rasha, said she and her husband were taking their four children to the park when the operation began. The family walked around the corner to borrow a Thermos flask from a relative, and Rasha was inside the house when a rocket turned the street into blood and dust. “She loved school. She was so eager to come back after the summer that she already had me call the teacher and sign up for next year,” said the 27-year-old, surrounded by mourners at the family home as she held Alaa’s pink backpack and browsed through her school. books. “I was standing by the window when it happened. I saw our relatives holding my daughter and she was bleeding. He knows nothing about rockets. What was her crime?’ A Palestinian woman hangs laundry in her home damaged during the Israel-Gaza conflict. Photo: Suhaib Salem/Reuters Islamic Jihad, which was founded in 1981 with the goal of establishing an Islamic Palestinian state and destroying Israel, is directly funded by Iran and designated a terrorist organization by most of the international community. Unlike Hamas, which seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, it is not burdened with the day-to-day governance of the coastal enclave, and as a result is often the driving force behind confrontations with Israel. While the two movements are allied, Islamic Jihad often acts independently and sometimes undermines Hamas’s authority. The weekend violence – the worst since the 11-day war in May 2021, which killed 256 people in Gaza and 14 people in Israel – was sparked by the arrest of Bassem al-Saadi, the top commander of Islamic Jihad in the occupied West Bank. While Islamic Jihad did not respond by firing rockets at Israel, the Israeli defense establishment insisted that Breaking Dawn prevented an impending major retaliatory attack. The campaign is seen by the majority of the Israeli public as a resounding success: the IDF managed to kill two senior Islamic Jihad commanders and says it destroyed rocket launch sites and training camps, without suffering a single Israeli casualty. A bet that Hamas would not be dragged into the fray, sparking an all-out war, appears to have paid off as the group is still replenishing its arsenal and tunnel network after the latest round of conflict. The operation destroyed the security credentials of Israel’s caretaker prime minister, centrist Yair Lapid, before the politically polarized country holds its fifth election in less than four years this November. However, Gaza’s 2.2 million residents are paying a heavy price. Four wars and numerous other battles with Israel since the Hamas takeover have destroyed the infrastructure and economy of the 17 square miles, while 15 years of a joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade have left the trapped population struggling for access to clean water, electricity and adequate medical care. A Palestinian boy holds an Islamic Jihad flag next to a photo of the group’s leader, Khaled Mansour, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Saturday. Photo: Said Khatib/AFP/Getty On Monday, after the ceasefire went into effect, most people on the strip were trying to return to a sense of normalcy. Electricity and water were still out in many areas, and fuel deliveries from Israel have yet to reach gas stations. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST In Sheikh Ijlin, a neighborhood of southern Gaza City bordering the Mediterranean, residents of two apartment buildings picked up the rubble of their homes, which were destroyed on Saturday. two barefoot girls played with plastic flowers and blankets pulled from the wreckage as adults surveyed the damage. Safa Shammalakh, a 31-year-old disabled shopkeeper, tried to get to safety after hearing screams on Saturday morning that the Israelis had called the owner of the building next door, warning that he would be hit. “My house is gone, my grocery store is gone,” he said. “We hope the ceasefire will hold, but there are never guarantees. It always happens again.”