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

What the report says

Al Jazeera reports the story of Nisreen Touman, a young mother from Gaza City whose family life has been repeatedly shattered by the war that began in October 2023. The article says she lost her first husband, Sami, and their two young sons in a June 2024 attack in Nuseirat, central Gaza, and later lost her second husband in July 2025 while she was pregnant. The account is based on Nisreen’s own recollections and describes a life that shifted from stability in her home in Nuseirat to repeated displacement, bereavement and survival.

According to the report, the June 2024 incident occurred during a major Israeli operation in Nuseirat tied to the rescue of Israeli captives. Nisreen said her husband was killed by gunfire from a quadcopter, and the house where the family had gathered was then struck from the air. Al Jazeera also cites UN and Gaza Health Ministry figures for that day, saying many homes were hit and hundreds of Palestinians were killed or wounded. The article says 18 members of her husband’s family died in the same events.

After her first loss, Nisreen remarried her late sister’s husband largely to help care for his four children, who had lost their mother. The report says she later became pregnant, but in July 2025 her second husband was killed in an explosion near al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat. Four months later she gave birth to a daughter, Sidra, and now lives with the baby in her family’s home in Gaza. The piece highlights the wider human toll of the war, including bereavement, displacement and the long-term effects on surviving relatives.