Twice Widowed: The Devastating Journey of a Gaza Mother Through Years of War and Loss

Nisreen Touman has spent three years going to bed in tears, remembering everything she has lost since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023. By the age of 34, Nisreen had already been widowed twice. First, she lost her husband and her two children in June 2024. Then, in July 2025, just eight months after remarrying, she lost her second husband while pregnant.

Before the war on Gaza, Nisreen lived a stable life 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. On June 8, 2024, everything changed when heavy bombing and gunfire erupted after she returned home from visiting extended family in al-Mawasi in Khan Younis.

Sami rushed outside to bring children inside before going back out to check on the situation. That was the last time Nisreen saw him; he was killed by a gunshot to the head from a quadcopter. Minutes later, an Israeli air raid targeted the house where 25 members of her family were staying. Nisreen lost her two children and Sami in the attack, holding her deceased children in her arms for two hours while trapped before being evacuated to a hospital.

That day marked one of the bloodiest of the war, coinciding with a military operation in the Nuseirat refugee camp to rescue four Israeli captives. The United Nations reported that 89 inhabited houses were targeted, and Gaza’s Health Ministry stated that 274 Palestinians were killed and 698 wounded.

Four and a half months later, Nisreen agreed to marry her late sister’s husband—who was also her first husband’s brother—to help care for her sister's four children, who had lost their mother. Although the marriage lacked romance, it provided mutual comfort and stability. Encouraged by her mother, Nisreen eventually decided to become pregnant to experience motherhood again.

However, on July 8, 2025, her second husband, Mohammed, was killed in a strike near al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat. Four months later, she gave birth to their daughter, Sidra. Now living with Sidra at her family’s home in Gaza while her late sister’s children are cared for by their grandfather, Nisreen remains deeply marked by the continuous tragedies of the war.