Marwan al-Sultan
Cardiologist and director of the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza · c. 1976–2025 · Tal al-Hawa, Gaza City
Dr. Marwan al-Sultan, 49, director of Gaza's Indonesian Hospital and one of the last two cardiologists in the Strip, was killed on July 2, 2025, when an Israeli airstrike struck the rented Gaza City apartment where his displaced family was sheltering; his wife, a daughter, his sister and his son-in-law were killed with him, and the Israeli military said it had struck a 'key terrorist' and was reviewing harm to civilians.
Marwan al-Sultan was a cardiologist — by July 2025 one of only two left in Gaza, as al-Shifa Hospital’s director put it — and the director of the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya, the largest hospital in the northern Strip. He had studied medicine in Jordan and chose to return to Gaza in 2019 despite opportunities abroad, a colleague told AP; after Israeli forces arrested the hospital’s previous director in a November 2023 raid, al-Sultan took over, and when the hospital was forced out of service he kept working. “Dr. Marwan had not taken off his white coat since the beginning of the war,” Gaza’s health director Munir al-Bursh said.
Displaced from the family’s home in Jabalia, the al-Sultans had moved about a month earlier into a rented apartment in Gaza City’s Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, Drop Site News reported. Around 2 p.m. on July 2, 2025, a missile struck his room, leaving the rest of the building largely intact, his surviving daughter Lubna told AP. Killed with him were his wife Thekra, 45, their daughter Lamis, 19, his sister and his son-in-law; Gaza’s Health Ministry put the toll at at least eight, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights named nine dead. His son Ahmed, 20, a medical student, had left the apartment ten minutes before the strike.
Al-Bursh wept over the body at al-Shifa Hospital. MER-C, the Indonesian charity that built the hospital, condemned the killing — “It was not collateral damage,” its chairman told AP — and Healthcare Workers Watch said al-Sultan was the seventieth health worker killed by Israeli forces in fifty days; according to the United Nations, more than 1,400 Palestinian health workers have been killed since October 2023. The Israeli military said it had struck a “key terrorist” from Hamas, that it “regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals,” and that the incident was under review.
Sources
Open questions
The Israeli military said it had struck a 'key terrorist' from Hamas, that it 'regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals,' and that the incident was under review. No findings have been made public.
Sources
- https://apnews.com/article/gaza-doctor-killed-israeli-airstrike-527ee681c4e1155bb24f4380d011fe5d
- https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/israels-targeted-killing-of-beloved
- https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-304-gaza-strip
- https://pchrgaza.org/new-israeli-crime-prominent-doctor-assassinated-alongside-several-family-members-in-gaza/