by Picking through the rubble of his destroyed home, Khaled Nabhan picks up a doll that belonged to his granddaughter and kisses it.
The toys and memories he has left are his grandchildren, 3-year-old Reem and 5-year-old Tarek, who were killed last week while they were sleeping in their bed.
Their home was brought down by what Nabhan said was a nearby Israeli airstrip in the Al Nuseirat refugee camp in southern Gaza. Nabhan only managed to return, after a break in the fight.
Speaking to CNN from the ruins of his home, Nabhan described the last evening he had with his grandchildren, breaking down in tears as he recalled how they begged him to take them out for fun. He refused because of the danger from Israeli airwaves, he said.
“They kept asking for results but there is no result because of the war,” he said. Stuck in his hand was a tangerine which he had given to Reem as a treat, but which she had never had the chance to eat. “All I could find were these tangerines.”
The family was sleeping when the air strike hit. Khaled said he woke up screaming for his children and grandchildren, struggling to walk through the darkness and wreckage to find them.
“I couldn’t find anyone, they were buried under all this rubble,” he said, standing on a bed in a room full of debris.
Nabhan showed CNN videos and photos of the family in happier times, of the children singing, laughing and playing. In one clip, Nabhan throws his granddaughter in the air and hits her as Reem gleefully giggles. In another image, Nabhan grins as he rides a bicycle, his granddaughter sits on the handlebars wearing a pretty yellow dress with white flowers in her hair.
The two were inseparable, he said. While their father was working abroad, the family lived with their grandfather and it was all the world to Reem.
Her favorite game was pulling her beard and he would pull her pig tails, he said.
“I’ll shoot, if you shoot,” she says laughing in a video.
In the battered bedroom of their home in Gaza, Nabhan showed CNN where his daughter Maysa – Reem and Tarek’s mother – was sleeping when the house collapsed. She and her sister survived but were badly injured.
Speaking to CNN from a relative’s home in Gaza, where they are recovering, Maysa said she remembered screaming and something heavy pressing down on her.
“I heard Reem screaming next to me, I told her something heavy is on top of me, I can’t reach you. I said my last prayer and after that I woke up in the hospital,” she said.
Maysa was overcome with the news that her young children were gone. Their lifeless bodies were found together under the rubble.
“I was just sick in the hospital. I hugged them, I wanted as many hugs as I could get. No matter how many hugs I gave them I never got enough,” said Maysa.
For almost seven weeks, most people in the Gaza Strip have been trying to survive, focusing on the basics: finding shelter, fleeing the fighting, accessing food and water.
The pause in the fighting between Israel and Hamas allowed many families in Gaza to go out, buy supplies and return home to retrieve belongings or even bury the bodies of their loved ones.
For many Gazans like Nabhan, the cease-fire has deepened the heartache as they gaze upon their newly devastated surroundings. Weeks of airstrikes and fighting have left whole neighborhoods on the ground and many are now able to see the full scale of the destruction for the first time.
More than 14,800 Palestinians, including 6,000 children, have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its offensive in response to Hamas terror attacks on October 7, according to figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health in the West Bank, which draws its data from Hamas. . – run health authorities in the Gaza Strip.
Earlier this month, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said that Gaza has “become a graveyard for children,” adding “The nightmare in Gaza is more than a humanitarian crisis. It is a crisis of humanity.”
His comments came four weeks after Israel declared war on Hamas, following the Islamist group’s deadly October 7 terror attack that killed 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, and saw around 240 others kidnapped and returned to Gaza – the largest one-day attack on. Israel since the country was founded in 1948.
The temporary truce also brought joy when those hostages released by Hamas as part of the deal agreed last week finally returned to Israel and were reunited with their families in heartwarming scenes. Others are still anxiously awaiting news of the fate of their loved ones, including multiple children, who are still being held captive by Gaza militants.
Nabhan says his grandfather is sad that his grandchildren were too young to understand the war in which they lived and died. He was not a fighter, he said, and his family had nothing to do with the war.
Now, his grandchildren won’t be able to dress up, play or eat their favorite treats.
Nabhan was seen around the world in a widely shared video of his moment of grief last week as he kissed his 3-year-old granddaughter goodbye.
“I used to kiss her on her cheeks, on her nose and she would smile,” he said. “I kissed her but she didn’t wake up.”
In another video on social media, the bodies of the two children were prepared for burial in bright shadows as Nabhan straightened Tarek’s hair.
“I combed his hair like he would always ask me to, like a photo he would always show me,” Nabhan said. “He removed his hair like that, he’s gone now.”
From his destroyed home, Nabhan goes in search of his damaged possessions and brings an army of colorful toys – the loss etched in the lines of his face.
“I wish, hoping they were just sleeping,” he said. “But they weren’t sleeping, they’re gone.
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