GAZA CITY
The child in Sahar Hamdan's hands kept trembling in fear as Israeli warplanes kept thundering above their heads.
Like any mother in the world, this Gaza Strip woman did her best to comfort her child, but the horror of the moment made all Hamdan's efforts seem ineffective.
All of a sudden then, Hamdan's voice was silenced for good when she and her 12-year-old son were killed by a rocket fired by an Israeli plane on their home in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun.
The death toll did not include this 27-year-old woman and her son alone. Fourteen other men and women were also killed in the same strike.
Together with others, these victims brought the total death toll from Israel's ongoing offensive on Gaza to 166.
But according to Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qodra, Gaza's total death toll included 16 women.
"Most of them were mothers who were killed beside their children," al-Qodra told Anadolu Agency.
He said Saturday was the most bloody for women in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli strikes on Gaza claimed the lives of 50 Palestinians on Saturday, including nine women, al-Qodra said.
This sends fear down the spines of all women here. One of these women is Randa Abdel-Rahman, 38, who was slightly injured in a previous Israeli strike.
"I cannot reconcile myself with the notion that my children can become orphans one day," Abdel-Rahman told AA.
"Israel targets children and women. Every time it kills a woman, this woman leaves children and a whole family behind her," she added.
-Crimes against humanity-
A Palestinian Ministry of Women Affairs official said the fact that Israel targets women and children in its current onslaught on the Gaza Strip proves that the self-proclaimed Jewish state commits crimes against humanity.
"Wars are also governed by laws and limits," Amira Haroun said. "Israel has done away with all these laws and limits by killing women and children and destroying homes," she told AA.
Haroun called on parties to the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women to act against Israeli violations in the Gaza Strip.
She also called on international institutions and rights organizations to protect the children of Gaza, while Israel launches a full-fledged war against the Palestinian Strip.
Israel has launched a military offensive – dubbed "Operation Protective Edge" – against the Gaza Strip with the stated aim of ending rocket fire from the enclave.
Gaza-based resistance factions, for their part, have continued to fire hundreds of rockets into Israel, some of which have reached Tel Aviv, in response to the ongoing offensive.
No Israeli fatalities have been reported thus far.
By Ola Attalah
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