Dr Marwan Al‑Sultan, the Director of the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, was killed today in an Israeli airstrike. According to his surviving daughter, Lobna Al-Sultan, the airstrike specifically targeted the room her father was in, killing Dr Marwan, his wife, his sister, his younger daughter, and his son-in-law:

“A missile was dropped on his room exactly, on his place, on him precisely. All the rooms were fine except for his; the missile hit it precisely.”

The family was renting the apartment in Gaza City after the Israeli military forcibly displaced them from northern Gaza.

Dr. Marwan was a leading figure in Gaza’s medical community. He served as a Consultant in Internal Medicine and Cardiology at Al-Shifa Medical Complex and was one of the only two remaining heart specialists in Gaza. During the past 21 months, Dr. Marwan worked tirelessly, continuing to care for patients despite repeated attacks on the hospitals where he was working and the crippling shortage of medical supplies.

Dr. Marwan was also an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the Islamic University of Gaza. He played an important role in training future generations of doctors, and his killing marks a major loss for medical education in Gaza. One of his students described him to HWW as the backbone of the hospital:

“He knew what was going on with all the staff. He would ask the nurses one by one about how they were doing, about their children, about their spouses. All the young nurses and doctors, he would not leave anyone out; he was like a father to everyone. May God rest his soul, he was so good and a human being before anything else.”

His killing is part of a wider pattern. As of today, Israeli occupation forces have killed or detained the directors of all the hospitals in North Gaza. The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr Ahmed Al-Kahlout, and his fellow acting director, Dr Hossam Abu Safiya, are being held in Israeli detention. They have been detained for 569 and 188 days, respectively. The director of Al-Awda Hospital in North Gaza, Dr. Ahmed Muhanna, has been in Israeli detention for 564 days. 

The death of Dr Marwan Al-Sultan is a catastrophic loss both to the medical community and to Gaza as a whole. He is the 70th healthcare worker to be killed by the Israeli occupation forces in the past 50 days. Israel’s lethal targeting of healthcare workers is not only causing a horrific loss of life but also obliterating their decades of lifesaving medical expertise at a time when their skills could not be needed more.

HWW: Israeli Occupation Forces killed 70 healthcare workers in Gaza in the last 50 days.

NB: download Healthcare Workers Watch Incident report for further details and audio-visual evidence on the attack. For contact details of surviving family members and colleagues of Dr Marwan, please reach out to us via email: info@healthcareworkerswatch.org

Healthcare Workers Watch

Gaza City

#NotATarget