The last time Thai mother Noopar Pansa-ard said she heard from her son, gunfire and explosions crackled in the background as he told her to stay strong if anything happened to him.
“I told him – don’t talk like that … My heart will shatter if you don’t return,” Noopar said. A day later, her son Somkuan Pansa-ard, 39, was killed during an attack by Hamas militants on Israel, where he had gone to work in a fruit plantation to send money back to help his family repay a loan.
Co-workers told his family on Sunday he had been shot by Hamas militants. It was not clear where in Israel Somkuan had been killed. “Losing my son … is the biggest loss in my life,” said his father Khraboan Pansa-ard, hunched over on a chair as Noopar sat nearby, clutching a portrait of their son and wiping away tears.
“I didn’t want my son to go because this country is at war. I feared he would lose…
