Gaza City, Gaza — For three years, Nisreen Touman has gone to bed every night in tears, remembering all she has lost since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023. By the time Nisreen was 34, she had been widowed twice. First, she lost her husband and her two children in June 2024.
Then in July 2025, eight months after she remarried, Nisreen lost her second husband while she was pregnant. Before Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Nisreen lived a happy and stable life in her home in Nuseirat, central Gaza, with her husband, Sami, 35, and their two children, Mahmoud and Laith, who were aged five and two at the time of their deaths. I got along with my husband, and we were friends,” she says, fighting back her tears.
On June 8, 2024, Nisreen was returning home with her husband and children after visiting extended family, who had been displaced to al-Mawasi in Khan Younis. I was upstairs with my husband when suddenly we started hearing heavy, very close, bombing and gunfire.” Her husband rushed outside to bring their children and his brother’s and sister’s children inside, where 25 members of her family were staying. He then went outside again to see what was happening, as aircraft flew overhead.
I later learned that he had been killed by a gunshot to the head from a quadcopter that was flying over the area that day,” she said. Minutes later, while trying to calm the children as the bombing and gunfire continued, the house was targeted by an Israeli aircraft. I heard the family 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 suffered severe head injuries, while the other appeared to be sleeping. It was clear that they were dead,” she says, recalling how she was unable to move from the shock.
Her husband’s brother came and placed the children in her arms. I was completely unable to speak, just tears running silently,” she said. After repeated requests to the International Committee of the Red Cross for help, the family were eventually evacuated to a hospital.
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