The pause in fighting in Gaza has given many families the chance to return home to retrieve belongings — and in some cases, the bodies of their relatives.
CNN followed one man back to his destroyed home. Grieving grandfather Khaled Nabhan was seen around the world in a widely shared video of his moment of grief last week as he kissed his lifeless 3-year-old granddaughter goodbye.
In the video posted on social media, Nabhan shakes the little girl Reem gently and tries to open her eyes, as if she is asleep.
“I used to kiss her on her cheeks, on her nose and she would giggle,” Nabhan told CNN in an interview. “I kissed her but she wouldn’t wake up.”
Reem was killed last week, alongside her 5-year-old brother Tarek, while they were sleeping when their home was brought down by a nearby airstrike in Al Nuseirat refugee camp in southern Gaza.
Speaking to CNN, Nabhan described the final evening he had with his grandchildren, breaking down in tears as he recalled how they begged him to take them outside to play. He had refused because of the danger from Israeli airstrikes, he said.
In another social media video, the two children’s bodies lay prepared for burial in white shrouds while Nabhan fixes Tarek’s hair.
“I combed his hair like he would always ask me to, like a photo he would always show me,” Nabhan said later. “He loved his hair like that, now he’s gone.”
Picking through the rubble of his family’s home on Monday, Nabhan showed CNN where his daughter Maysa — Reem and Tarek’s mother — was sleeping with the children when the house collapsed. She and her sister survived but were seriously injured.
From the debris, he picked up a doll that had belonged to his granddaughter, kissing it. Clutched in his hand was a tangerine that he’d given Reem as a treat, but that she never had the chance to eat.
Hear more from Nabhan as he returns home:
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