Grief, pain grip Gazan families losing loved ones in Turkiye-Syria earthquakes

GAZA -- With tears running down his face, Magdy Darabih, an old man in Gaza, received his young son's homecoming, in white coffin, from quake-hit Turkiye.

His son Yousuf, who had travelled to Turkiye eight years ago to study medicine, died in the devastating earthquakes a week ago.

"I dreamed a lot to welcome you with your white medical uniform, but life decided to force me to bury you with your white coffin," Darabih mourned his son.

"I was so happy when you escaped from the intolerable situation in Gaza, but I did not know that you will not survive the earthquake," he said in tears.

"All our hopes are buried with you," he said.

Yousuf's dream is to become a doctor someday to benefit impoverished people in Gaza, his motherland.

"The death was faster than my son, who did not achieve any one of his dreams," he grieved to Xinhua of his son's unfulfilled life.

Abdul Rahman Darabih, Yousuf's brother, said the family had lived a hard life since his brother left Gaza. "We thought that he was in a safe place far away from wars and conflicts."

The family will bury Yousuf in a cemetery in Gaza, so that his parents can visit him from time to time to find a comfort.

Abdul Karim, another quake victim, is also among thousands of Gazans who left the besieged Palestinian territory at a young age to find a better life for themselves and to support their families.

His family had to grasp an even more brutal reality as they noticed that the bodies of his son's six-member family, who all killed in the quake in Antalya Province, could not be brought home.

"I have not seen my son and his kids for more than 12 years," his mother Om Raed Abu Jalhoum told Xinhua in a black dress and scarf.

"I cannot imagine the scene under the rubbles. I do not know if they died directly or they had suffered a lot before passing away," she said.

Without a better choice, the family opened a funeral house to console his heart-broken mother and brothers, and for relatives and friends to extend condolences.

About 21,000 Gazans live in Turkiye, according to statistics issued by the Immigration Department of the Hamas-run interior ministry in 2021.

So far, at least 95 Palestinians have been killed in the Turkiye-Syria earthquakes, according to the Palestinian Foreign Ministry.