‘I am going crazy’: Families of missing Gaza children endure agonising uncertainty
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Maha Hussaini
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Sat, 04/18/2026 - 15:07
As 2,900 Palestinian children remain missing after Israeli attacks, a mother describes the anguish of not knowing the fate of her ‘vanished’ son
Naima al-Sayed says she feels she's going crazy after 10 months without answers on the whereabouts of her missing 14-year-old boy, Anas al-Sayed (MEE/Mohammed al-Sammari)
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To help his family prepare dinner, 14-year-old Anas al-Sayed went out one evening in northern Gaza to collect firewood.
After reaching an area close to where Israeli forces were stationed, the Palestinian boy disappeared.
Around 10 months later, his family still does not know his whereabouts.
“At around 4 pm on 24 June 2025, Anas left the damaged home we had taken refuge in at Shati refugee camp in north-western Gaza City to bring back firewood for cooking,” his mother, Naima al-Sayed, told Middle East Eye. “He never came back.”
She said he had gone with his cousin, who also needed firewood for his family. Hours later, the boy returned alone.
“At around 10 pm, my nephew came back and said he didn’t know where my son was,” she said.
As they were collecting firewood, Israeli artillery fired directly at the two boys, who ran away in different directions.
“My 12-year-old nephew ran towards the sea area (west), and my son ran towards the east (closer to Israeli forces),” Naima added.
“My nephew hid behind rocks and called out for him, but there was no answer. In the end, he came back without him.”
As night fell and Anas still had not returned, his father went out to search for him. But when reaching the area, he was forced back by an Israeli quadcopter that appeared overhead and opened fire in the area.
'I feel like I am going crazy. The anguish I feel is unbearable'
- Naima al-Sayed, Palestinian mother
“He came back and told me it was too dangerous,” she said. “I didn’t sleep that night. I counted the minutes until sunrise.”
At dawn, she went out by herself.
“I walked for hours, asking everyone I encountered about my son,” the 49-year-old mother recalled.
“Some told me he may have been detained, and others said he may have been killed. On that day, we visited al-Shifa Hospital three times to check if they had received his body, but we didn’t find him. It’s like he’s vanished.”
Desperate search
Anas's story is far from isolated.
The teenager is one of around 2,900 Palestinian children who have gone missing in the war-torn enclave since the Israeli genocide began in October 2023, according to the Palestinian Centre for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared (PCMFD).
For 10 months after he disappeared, the family contacted several international organisations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), but said none were able to help establish his whereabouts.
“We started checking the lists of released detainees to see if my son was among them,” Naima said. “I look at the ages first. I search for 15, because now he would have turned 15.”
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“When we don’t find him, we try to meet anyone who has been released. We show them his picture and ask if they saw him. But no one has confirmed anything.”
According to estimates from PCMFD, of the 2,900 missing children in Gaza, around 2,700 are believed to have been killed, with their bodies still under the rubble.
The traces of another 200 have vanished across various areas of the Strip.
“These children have either been detained and forcibly disappeared by the Israeli military at some point during the war, or targeted and killed in a manner that left their remains lost in hazardous areas, including aid distribution points and areas under Israeli military control,” Mona Abunada, media coordinator at PCMFD, told MEE.
“The problem is that we cannot list them among the killed or the detained. Their fate remains unknown, and some families have told us they would accept any answer, even if their children were killed. They cannot live with this uncertainty.”
Information 'black hole'
Overall, around 8,000 Palestinians have been missing across the Gaza Strip since 2023.
Since the start of its ground invasion in October that year, the Israeli military has detained thousands of Palestinians from their homes, at checkpoints it has established, and in areas near where its forces are deployed.
Israeli authorities continue to withhold information about those held, including children, and have declined requests from the ICRC for details on detainees’ whereabouts.
'I wish we knew whether he was dead or alive, just to know whether we are looking for a detained child or a body'
- Naima al-Sayed, Palestinian mother
Patrick Griffiths, an ICRC spokesperson in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, said that the organisation has had no access to Israeli detention facilities since October 2023 and has not been notified of those detained.
“That means that’s essentially a black hole in what we know, and in information we are able to facilitate sharing with families who are looking for loved ones,” Griffiths told MEE.
“Another main limit in terms of the information that we might be able to share with families is, especially in Gaza, […] that their loved ones have been killed.”
Griffiths explained that thousands of bodies lie beneath the rubble of Gaza, while the process to remove the rubble remains very limited.
“There are no material means to do so. There are only one or two functioning bulldozers to clear rubble in the part of Gaza where people can live, but also because that work is incredibly hazardous, it is very difficult to do,” he added.
“We know that the rubble across Gaza is also strewn with explosive hazards, which makes the work of clearing rubble to try and find those who might have been killed incredibly dangerous, and incredibly slow work.”
Naima al-Sayed looks at photos of her missing child, Anas al-Sayed, in her tent in Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip (MEE/Mohammed al-Sammari)
For Anas's family, however, the uncertainty is its own form of suffering.
“I wish we knew whether he was dead or alive, just to know whether we are looking for a detained child or a body,” Naima said.
“I don’t know whether he is in prison, hungry, tortured, or sleepless, or whether his body has decayed.”
When they were forced to flee Gaza City southwards, Naima took Anas’s clothes with her in a plastic bag.
Today, she keeps them close to where she sleeps in their makeshift tent in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.
“I feel like I am going crazy. I keep doing things that are incomprehensible. The anguish I feel is unbearable.”
Israel's genocide in Gaza
Gaza City, occupied Palestine
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