Twice Widowed: Gaza Mother Loses Husband, Children Amid War

Gaza City — For the past three years, Nisreen Touman has gone to sleep in tears every night, remembering everything she has lost since Israel's war in Gaza began in October 2023.

By age 34, Nisreen has been widowed twice. In June 2024, she lost her husband and two children. In July 2025, eight months after remarrying, she lost her second husband while pregnant.

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

"I once had a home and a complete family. My husband and I were in harmony, we were friends," she said, fighting back tears.

Everything changes

On June 8, 2024, Nisreen returned home with her husband and children after visiting relatives who had been displaced to al-Mawasi, Khan Younis.

"We got home and the children were playing in the street. Everything was normal. I was upstairs with my husband when suddenly I heard bombs and gunfire exploding very close by."

Her husband rushed outside to bring the children and his nephews inside, where 25 family members were sheltering. He went out again to check the situation as aircraft circled overhead.

"That was the last time I saw him. I later learned he was shot in the head by a quadcopter and killed," she said.

Minutes later, as she tried to calm the children amid the bombardment, the house was struck by an Israeli airstrike.

"I blacked out for a moment, then woke in thick dust that blocked out everything. As the dust began to clear, I understood that where I was had been bombed. I heard my family screaming, saw blood and body parts. I started shouting: 'My children, my children.'"

Nisreen broke down as she recalled the scene of her two children lying on the ground. One was severely wounded in the head; the other looked as if she were asleep.

"I knew right then that I had lost them. It was clear they were dead," she said, recalling how she could not move from shock.

Her brother-in-law came and placed the two children in her arms.

"I couldn't speak. I couldn't speak at all, only tears falling silently. Everyone around me was wailing."

For two hours, Nisreen held her children as the whole family, including the wounded, remained trapped in the wrecked house amid gunfire and bombs. After repeated pleas to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the family was finally evacuated to a hospital.

The deaths of Nisreen's family came on one of the bloodiest days of the war. On that same day, June 8, 2024, Israeli forces launched a military operation in the Nuseirat refugee camp to rescue four Israeli hostages taken after the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. The United Nations said 89 homes and inhabited residential buildings were hit during nearly four hours of bombing. Gaza's Health Ministry said 274 Palestinians were killed and 698 wounded that day alone.

Eighteen members of Nisreen's 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 many other relatives.

A difficult decision

Nisreen returned alone to the family tent in al-Mawasi, southern Gaza, struggling with trauma and grief. Four and a half months later, she faced a difficult decision when the husband of her late sister — also the brother of her first husband — proposed.

He wanted to marry Nisreen and asked her to help care for his four children who had lost their mother.

"At first I strongly objected. I didn't want to start a family or get married," Nisreen said. In the end she agreed because she wanted to care for her sister's children, especially the youngest, who was just one year old.

Nisreen does not hide that the second marriage was not one of romantic love. "I lost my husband, he lost his wife. I lost my children, and the four children lost their mother," she said.

The marriage allowed the two to fill the roles of those who had died. In her sister's children, Nisreen found some comfort for the absence of her own.

But the new life was also full of challenges, especially in the first months. She still mourned her first husband and children as she and her new husband tried to adapt to each other. Their different personalities and new circumstances created many difficulties, but gradually life became more stable. Nisreen even considered having another child.

"I used to see my lost children in my dreams every day. I would sink into thoughts of them, they never left my mind," she said. "So, encouraged by my mother, I decided to get pregnant and experience motherhood again."

A second loss

But eight months later, on July 8, 2025, Nisreen faced something she had never imagined: losing her second husband.

"Mohammed woke up, had breakfast with the children and said he was going to visit a friend. Seconds later, we heard a big explosion," she said.

Shortly afterward, a neighbor told Nisreen that Mohammed had been killed in an airstrike targeting 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 found a new stability, her life was once again turned upside down.

"I feel like I'm back at the starting point," she said. "I think about my unborn child, about my sister's children who have now lost both father and mother, and about the new loss I am going through."

The remaining months of the pregnancy were heavy for Nisreen. Four months after Mohammed's death, she gave birth to a 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.

Although her daughter, who will turn one in October, gives Nisreen a "small compensation" after three years of sorrow, she still aches that the child will grow up without a father.

"Becoming a mother again gives me joy, but that feeling is very incomplete. She is a small compensation," she said.

Caring for Sidra has become Nisreen's top priority.

"I have become more withdrawn. I like to be silent for hours and focus on my daughter," Nisreen said. "I am afraid to make new choices or try to start a different life after everything that has happened."

Nisreen now lives with Sidra at the family home in Gaza, while the four children of her late sister are cared for by their grandfather. She visits them from time to time.

She says that no matter how much time passes, she cannot get past the chain of tragedies that have shaped her life.

"I never imagined I would go through all of this. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in an Indian film because of everything that has happened," she said. "But under war, sadly, anything is possible."