Tayem Khreis

In the footage that Middle East Eye published of the killing of Hala Khreis, the small figure at the front of the column is her grandson. Tayem — then four, his mother Heba still at home packing — walked a few paces ahead of the crowd holding his grandmother’s hand, a white flag in his other hand. When the shot struck her, he ran.

In the turmoil the boy went missing, his family told CNN; hours later someone called to say he had continued south with a group of acquaintances. Middle East Eye reported that a neighbor took him to Nuseirat and on to Rafah. As of late January 2024 he was in Rafah with his uncle Mohammad, while his parents, Heba and Youssuf Abdel A’atti, were still waiting to be reunited with him; his younger brother kept asking, “Where is Tayem? Where is Teta?” He had celebrated his fifth birthday during the war, without them.

A year later his aunt Nour Khreis recounted the day to Noon Post: the boy ran in fear, became separated from his mother, “reached the south with one of the families, and we found him later.” The family itself scattered — Nour to Egypt, others across Gaza and abroad — and nothing further about Tayem has been documented since.

Sources

• She was fleeing with her grandson, who was holding a white flag. Then she was shot — CNN
• One year after the killing of grandmother Hala Khreis — Noon Post (Arabic)
• The story of the Palestinian grandmother — Al-Quds News (Arabic)