News - Middle East: A 65-year-old Palestinian woman has buried her husband alone with her bare hands after the couple endured two months under Israel’s relentless attacks and siege in their home in Rafah.

Aziza Qishta recounted the ordeal of laying her husband, Ibrahim Qishta, 70, to rest without help, a shroud, or proper burial tools.

Ibrahim, who was blind and unable to walk unaided, was killed by shrapnel to the neck when an Israeli airstrike struck near their home in Khirbet al-Adas in early May.

For two months before the attack, the couple had remained trapped in their home, surviving on dwindling food supplies while shelling and air raids shook the neighborhood.

Telling her story to the Middle East Eye, Aziza said that after her husband was injured, she carried him on her back to a nearby house, where he eventually succumbed to his wounds.

With no one around and no materials, Aziza dug his grave alone near an olive tree in the garden of the house.

With no shroud, Aziza said she used a window curtain to wrap her husband’s body and began to roll him into the hole by herself.

“I placed his body in a plastic bag, covered him with a zinc sheet, wood, and then soil,” she said. “I recited Quran over him and wept silently.”

After the burial, Aziza returned home. Only a single room and a bathroom were left.

Two weeks later, Aziza checked the grave and found it had been disturbed by gunfire.

“His head was exposed,” she said. “My heart broke. I picked up his head, it felt as light as a loaf of bread, and returned it to the grave, dug a bit deeper, added a new piece of zinc and wood, and buried him again.” 

Confronting Israeli forces

After burying her husband for a second time, and with no food or water left, Aziza made the harrowing decision to leave her shattered home and face the Israeli soldiers alone.

Carrying a stick with a white cloth and two small bags, she walked to a military checkpoint.

At a checkpoint, she was stopped, ordered to remove her hijab at gunpoint, and photographed.

“I refused at first,” she said, “but when twenty rifles were aimed at me, I removed it—broken.”

Taken briefly in a jeep and later left near an unknown area, she wandered for hours before finding help and was eventually reunited with her family.

Aziza’s story is one of many emerging from Gaza, where more than 54,380 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its genocidal war in October 2023, according to Gaza's health ministry.

Many victims are still trapped under the rubble and on the roads as rescuers are unable to reach them, the ministry said.

Press TV