Gaza widows and orphans struggle with loss in makeshift camp

 In the moments when she is not in the tent caring for the children, Zouahra looks out at the sea that forms the western border of her world. On this sunny day it is blue and when the sun sets, gold and red shades will colour the horizon.

It is the same sea that washes the beaches of Tel Aviv to the north, and ebbs and floods along all the coasts of the Mediterranean. And it is the sea from which, Zouahra says, a shell from an Israeli gunboat brought death to her husband.

"He was on his way to the seaside where there were cars and an aid convoy… It was crowded, and the military boats started firing at people. My husband was hit in the head," she says. 

That was on 9 February - but Zouahra, who now lives in a section of a camp housing widows and orphans, did not find out immediately.

The 26-year-old mother had just given birth to her fourth child.

At first, the young men who had been at the scene and knew the truth wanted to keep the news from Zouahra. Mahmoud was just late they said.

But she knew something was wrong. Her brother-in-law arrived crying and shouting that Mahmoud was dead. Desperate for the truth, she went to the hospital or, as she puts it, "to the end of the world" - a phrase loaded with foreboding - to find him.

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Zouahra leans forward, lowers her head and sobs. Seeing her mother's distress, three-year-old Lana gently touches her arm. Then she softly pats the body of her baby brother Mohammed sleeping on her mum's lap.

Zouahra starts to speak again. "His entire body was connected to machines, and he felt freezing cold. I couldn't talk to him. I tried, but he wasn't responding.

"He was sleeping… He went to get food for his children and came back in a coffin."

The family were scattered by war. They lived in Gaza City before the fighting and after it began they fled to the refugee camp at Al-Nusseirat in the centre of the Gaza Strip. That was the end of Mahmoud's job working as a labourer for the Pioneer Food Company in Gaza.

From Al-Nusseirat, they were again uprooted, fleeing south to Rafah after the Israel Defense Forces told them it was a safe zone.

FULL ARTICLE AT: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68471121