Khaled Nabhan

Khaled Nabhan, also known as Abu Diaa, became one of the most recognizable faces of the war in November 2023, when video of him cradling the body of his three-year-old granddaughter Reem — killed with her five-year-old brother Tarek in an Israeli airstrike on the family’s home in Nuseirat refugee camp — spread around the world. Kissing her face and closing her eyes, he repeated the words “the soul of my soul,” a moment reported by CNN’s Jomana Karadsheh that came to symbolize the grief of Gaza’s families.

“I used to kiss her on her cheeks, on her nose and she would giggle. I kissed her but she wouldn’t wake up,” he told CNN from the ruins of his home during the November 2023 truce. In the months that followed, displaced from his destroyed home, Nabhan was filmed again volunteering to feed other displaced Palestinians, and his following on Instagram grew to around one million people.

On December 16, 2024, Nabhan was killed in an Israeli strike on Nuseirat refugee camp — the same camp where he had mourned his grandchildren thirteen months earlier — Anadolu and Haaretz reported. Local media said the strike hit near a cemetery in the camp, killing two others alongside him. He was 54.

Sources

• Palestinian grandfather who grieved for 3-year-old granddaughter killed in Israeli attack in Gaza — Anadolu Agency
• ‘I kissed her but she wouldn’t wake up.’ Grandfather grieves for 3-year-old granddaughter killed as she slept in Gaza — CNN
• Palestinian ‘grieving grandfather’ from viral video killed in an Israeli attack in central Gaza — Haaretz