Gaza Herald _In his mother’s arms, little Zaid Nofal was fast asleep. The night had settled quietly over the home for a few hours before the silence suddenly turned into tragedy. An Israeli airstrike ended Zaid’s life, leaving him no chance to celebrate his second birthday.
Zaid was not an ordinary child in a family already devastated by loss. He was born after his mother, Fatima, had lost three of her children in a single massacre. He grew up surrounded by the scars of absence and grief, only to become another name added to his family’s long list of losses.
Early Thursday morning, Zaid was with his mother and his two sisters, Baraa and Lina, at the home of his uncle Mustafa Nofal in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. The family woke to find part of the house reduced to rubble.
In one corner of Bureij, Mustafa, 40, carries the story of a family struggling to survive among the ruins of war.
“We were sleeping peacefully. Suddenly, we heard the house collapsing on top of us. We didn’t know what was happening or what had happened,” Mustafa told Felesteen newspaper.
The two-story house was struck on the second floor, where Fatima and her children were staying. Within moments, Zaid was killed, while his mother and sisters were injured.
But Zaid’s story began long before that night.
A Family Marked by Loss
On October 13, 2023, during the first days of Israel’s war on Gaza, the Nofal family home in the town of Al-Zawaida in central Gaza was hit.
The attack killed 28 members of the family, according to Mustafa. Among those killed were his father, his mother, most of his siblings, their wives and children, as well as his own wife and five children.
Fatima survived the strike, but she was pulled from the rubble injured after losing her three children: Amin, 17, Hamza, 12, and Ahmed, who was only 37 days old.
Her two daughters, Baraa and Lina, were also injured.
Baraa, who had recently graduated from high school with a 97 percent average, now lives with extensive burns and requires reconstructive surgeries and medical treatment outside Gaza. Her sister Lina also requires intensive medical follow-up due to facial injuries.
Fatima was not facing a single loss. She found herself surrounded by the disappearance of an entire family beneath the rubble.
“She didn’t know whether to cry for her children or for the rest of her relatives,” Mustafa said.
Three days after the first massacre, Fatima also lost one of her brothers.
A Child Who Brought Hope
After a year and a half of grief and unimaginable loss, Zaid was born.
He was not simply a new child. For his mother, he represented a reason to continue living and a small light after overwhelming pain.
“God healed my brother’s wife’s heart and blessed her with this child,” Mustafa said. “He was her entire world. She saw him as compensation for everything she had lost.”
Zaid spent his short life , only a year and a half , surrounded by his mother and sisters before another airstrike took him away.
This time, Fatima did not lose only the three children she had already buried. She lost the child who had helped her carry that grief.
Two Wounds That Never Healed
Fatima survived death for a second time, but she was injured again.
She had not yet recovered from the wounds of the first attack when the second tragedy struck.
Today, Fatima struggles to speak under the weight of shock and trauma. She visits the hospital to check on her injured daughters and spends her nights beside her own mother.
Meanwhile, Baraa and Lina continue receiving treatment and are waiting for approval to travel outside the besieged Gaza Strip under medical referrals.
A Small Grave Among 11
In Al-Sawarah Cemetery, Zaid was buried beside his infant brother Ahmed and his cousins.
Ahmed was the only child whose body was recovered intact after the first attack. From many of the others killed in that strike, the family found only remains.
The bodies of 28 members of the family are now buried across 11 graves.
Among them is a small grave for a child who was not given enough time to reach his second birthday.
A child who came after loss.
A child who brought his mother hope.
A child whose life was taken before she could celebrate his presence for many more years.
