‘I kissed her but she wouldn’t wake up.’ Grandfather grieves for 3-year-old granddaughter killed as she slept in Gaza

Picking through the rubble of his destroyed home, Khaled Nabhan lifts a doll that had belonged to his granddaughter and kisses it.

Toys and memories are all he has left of his beloved grandchildren, 3-year-old Reem and 5-year-old Tarek, who were killed last week while they were sleeping in their bed.

Their home was brought down by what Nabhan said was a nearby Israeli airstrike in the Al Nuseirat refugee camp in southern Gaza. Nabhan has only just managed to return, following the pause in fighting.

Speaking to CNN from the ruins of his home, 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.

“They kept asking for fruit but there is no fruit because of the war,” he said. Clutched in his hand was a tangerine that he’d given Reem as a treat, but that she never had the chance to eat. “I could only find them these tangerines.”

The family was asleep when the airstrike hit. Khaled said he woke up screaming for his children and grandchildren, struggling to walk through the dark and the wreckage to find them.

“I couldn’t find anyone, they were buried underneath all this rubble,” he said, standing on a bed in a room full of debris.

Nabhan showed CNN videos and photos of the family in happier times, of the children singing, laughing and playing. In one clip, Nabhan throws his granddaughter into the air and catches her while Reem giggles with delight. In another image, Nabhan grins while riding a bicycle, his granddaughter sits on the handlebars wearing a pretty yellow dress and white flowers in her hair.

The two were inseparable, he said. With their father abroad working, the family lived with their grandfather and he was Reem’s whole world.

Her favorite game was pulling his beard and he would pull her piggy tails, he said.

“I’ll let go, if you let go,” she says giggling in a video.

In the battered bedroom of their house in Gaza, Nabhan showed CNN where his daughter Maysa — Reem and Tarek’s mother — was sleeping when the house collapsed. She and her sister survived but were seriously injured.

Speaking to CNN from a relative’s house in Gaza where they are recuperating, Maysa said she remembered screaming and something heavy pinning her down.

“I heard Reem screaming next to me, I told her there is something heavy on top of me, I can’t reach you. I said my final prayers and next I woke up in the hospital,” she said.

Maysa woke up to the news her young children were gone. Their lifeless bodies were found together under the rubble.

“At the hospital I was just numb. I hugged them, I wanted to get as many hugs as I could. No matter how much I hugged them I didn’t get enough,” Maysa said.