Widowed twice: A Gaza mother’s story of loss and survival

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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.

Everything changes

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.

“We arrived and the children were playing in the street. Everything was normal. 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.

“That was the last time I saw him. 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 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 started to understand our place was bombed. I heard the family screaming and saw blood and body parts. I started shouting, ‘My children, my children.’”

Nisreen lost her two children and husband in an Israeli air strike in 2024 [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

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.

“I knew from that moment that I had lost them. 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 could not speak. I was completely unable to speak, just tears running silently,” she said. “Everyone around me was screaming and crying.”

For two hours, Nisreen held her children in her arms as the family, including those who were injured, remained trapped in the damaged home as gunfire and bombing continued.

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

The killing of Nisreen’s family came on one of the bloodiest days of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. On June 8, 2024, Israeli forces launched a military operation in the Nuseirat refugee camp, central Gaza, to rescue four Israeli captives who had been held following the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

The United Nations said 89 inhabited houses and residential buildings were targeted in 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 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, as well as members of the extended family.

A difficult decision

Nisreen returned alone to her family’s tent in al-Mawasi south of Gaza, where she struggled with the trauma and grief of losing her family. Four and a half months later, Nisreen found herself facing a difficult decision when her late sister’s husband, who was also her first husband’s brother, proposed to her.

He wanted to marry Nisreen and have her help take care of their 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 departed sister’s children, especially the youngest, who was only one year old.

Nisreen does not hide the fact 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 the ones they lost. Nisreen found in her sister’s children a small comfort for the absence of her own.

But her new life came with significant challenges, especially during the first months. She was still grieving her first husband and her children, as she and her new husband attempted to adjust to each other.

Nisreen lost her second husband Mohammed in 2025 [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

Their different personalities and the new situation presented challenges, but gradually their lives became 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

But eight months later, on July 8, 2025, Nisreen faced something she had 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, Nisreen was told by a neighbour 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 settled into 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.

Nisreen now lives with Sidra at her family’s home in Gaza [do not use - Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

While her daughter, who turns one in October, has brought Nisreen a “little compensation” for three years of sadness, it pains her that she will grow up without a father.

“Becoming a mother again brought me joy, but that feeling was deeply incomplete. She was a little 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 from time to time.

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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