Gaza Mother’s Harrowing Journey: Surviving War, Loss, and a New Beginning

Gaza City, Gaza — For three years, Nisreen Touman has gone to bed each night in tears, haunted by the loss she has suffered since the war on Gaza began in October 2023.

By age 34, Nisreen Touman had already endured two widowers. In June 2024 she lost her husband and their two children. Eight months after remarrying, she lost her second husband in July 2025 while pregnant.

Before the war, Nisreen lived a stable and contented life in Nuseirat, central Gaza, with her husband Sami, aged 35, and their two children, Mahmoud and Laith, then aged five and two.

“I had a home and a complete family. I got along with my husband, and we were friends,” she says, fighting back tears.

Everything changes

On 8 June 2024, Nisreen was returning home with her husband and children after a visit to relatives who had been displaced to al‑Mawasi in Khan Younis.

“We arrived and the children were playing in the street. Everything was normal. I was upstairs with my husband when we suddenly heard heavy, nearby bombing and gunfire.”

Her husband rushed outside to bring their children and his brother’s and sister’s children inside, where 25 family members were sheltering.

He went outside again to assess the situation as aircraft flew overhead.

“That was the last time I saw him. I later learned that a quadcopter had killed him with a gunshot to the head,” she said.

Minutes later, while trying to calm the children amid continuing bombing and gunfire, the house was struck by an Israeli aircraft.

“I lost consciousness for a few moments, then woke up to thick dust that completely blocked my view,” she said.

“As the dust began to clear, I realised our house had been bombed. I heard family members screaming and saw blood and body parts. I started shouting, ‘My children, my children.’”

Nisreen breaks down as she recalls seeing her two children lying on the ground. One had severe head injuries, the other appeared to be asleep.

“I knew from that moment that I had lost them. It was clear they were dead,” she says, recalling being unable to move from shock.

Her husband’s brother came and placed the children in her arms.

“I could not speak. I was completely unable to speak, tears simply flowing silently,” she said. “Everyone around me was screaming and crying.”

For two hours, Nisreen held her children in her arms while the family, including the injured, remained trapped in the damaged home under continued gunfire and bombing.

After repeated requests to the International Committee of the Red Cross for assistance, the family was eventually evacuated to a hospital.

The killing of Nisreen’s family occurred during one of the deadliest days of Israel’s war on Gaza. On 8 June 2024, Israeli forces launched a military operation in the Nuseirat refugee camp, central Gaza, to rescue four Israeli captives held since the Hamas attacks on southern Israel on 7 October 2023.

The United Nations reported that 89 inhabited houses and residential buildings were targeted during nearly four hours of bombing. Gaza’s Health Ministry said that 274 Palestinians were killed and 698 wounded on that day alone.

Eighteen members of her husband’s family were killed, including her husband and children, her sister Sabreen (36), her mother‑in‑law, two of her husband’s brothers and their children, and other extended relatives.

A difficult decision

Nisreen returned alone to her family’s tent in al‑Mawasi, south of Gaza, where she struggled with trauma and grief after her losses. Four and a half months later, she faced a difficult decision when her late sister’s husband—who was also her first husband’s brother—proposed marriage.

He sought to marry Nisreen so she could help care for his four children, who had lost their mother.

“I strongly opposed it at first. I did not want to start a family or get married,” Nisreen said. She eventually agreed because she wanted to care for her sister’s children, especially the youngest, who was only one year old.

Nisreen makes clear that there were no romantic feelings behind her second marriage. “I had lost my husband, and he had lost his wife. I had lost my children, and the four children had lost their mother,” she said.

The marriage allowed two people to fill the roles of those they had lost. Nisreen found a small comfort in her sister’s children, compensating for the absence of her own.

However, her new life presented significant challenges, especially in the first months. She was still grieving her first husband and children while she and her new husband tried to adjust to one another.

Their differing personalities and the new circumstances presented challenges, but gradually their lives grew more stable. Nisreen even considered having another child.

“I used to see my children who had died in my dreams every day. I would drift into thoughts about them, and they never left my mind,” she said. “So, with encouragement from my mother, I decided to become pregnant and experience motherhood again.”

The second loss

Eight months later, on 8 July 2025, Nisreen faced something she never imagined: the loss of her second husband.

“Mohammed woke up, had breakfast with the children and said he was going to see a friend. A few moments later we heard a huge explosion,” she said.

Shortly after, a neighbour told Nisreen that Mohammed had been killed in a strike on a group of people near al‑Awda Hospital in Nuseirat.

For Nisreen, this second loss was even harder to bear than the first. After believing she had finally found a new sense of stability, her life was once again turned upside down.

“I felt like I was back at zero again,” she said. “I thought about the baby who had not yet been born, the children of my sister who had now lost both their mother and father, and the new loss I was living through.”

The remaining months of her pregnancy were heavy for Nisreen. Four months after Mohammed’s death, she gave birth to their daughter, Sidra.

Born into grief

Sidra’s birth brought back to Nisreen the pain of everything she had lost – her two children, her first husband and Mohammed.

While her daughter, who turns one in October, has provided Nisreen with a small consolation after three years of sorrow, it pains her that Sidra will grow up without a father.

“Becoming a mother again brought me joy, but that feeling was deeply incomplete. She was a small compensation,” she said.

Caring for Sidra has become Nisreen’s main priority.

“I have become more isolated. I prefer to stay quiet for hours and focus on my daughter,” Nisreen says. “I am afraid of making any new choices or trying to start another life after everything that happened to me.”

Nisreen now lives with Sidra at her family’s home in Gaza, while her late sister’s four children are being cared for by their grandfather. She visits them occasionally.

No matter how much time passes, she says she is unable to overcome the series of tragedies that have shaped her life.

“I never imagined I would go through all of this in my life. Sometimes it feels like I’m in an Indian film because of everything that has happened,” she said. “But under the war, unfortunately, anything is possible.”

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