On Wednesday, an Israeli airstrike on an apartment in Gaza City killed Dr. Marwan al-Sultan, the director of the Indonesian hospital, as the Israeli military continues to kill medical workers and decimate Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure.
According to The Associated Press, al-Sultan was killed alongside his wife, his daughter, and son-in-law. Other reports say his sister was also among the dead.
According to Haaretz, the Indonesian hospital has been out of service since May 21 after an Israeli airstrike destroyed its generators. Al-Sultan had been quoted by many media outlets, warning of the catastrophic destruction of Gaza’s medical infrastructure.
According to Healthcare Workers Watch (HWW), a Palestinian medical organization, al-Sultan’s killing marks the 70th healthcare worker killed by the Israeli military in Gaza in the past 50 days.
“The killing of Dr Marwan al-Sultan by the Israeli military is a catastrophic loss to Gaza and the entire medical community, and will have a devastating impact on Gaza’s healthcare system,” said Muath Alse, director of HWW, according to The Guardian.
“This is part of a much longer and systematic atrocious targeting of healthcare workers sanctioned by impunity. This is a tragic loss of life, but also an obliteration of their decades of lifesaving medical expertise and care at a time when the situation facing Palestinian civilians is unfathomably catastrophic,” Alse added.
The Guardian report said that among the healthcare workers killed over the past 50 days were “three other doctors, the chief nurses of the Indonesian hospital and al-Nasser children’s hospital, one of Gaza’s most senior midwives, a senior radiology technician, and dozens of young medical graduates and trainee nurses. On June 6, the first day of Eid, nine healthcare workers were killed in one day in airstrikes in the north of Gaza, where they were sheltering with their families.”
A May 25 Israeli airstrike on a home in Khan Younis killed nine out of 10 children of Doctors Alaa al-Najjar and Hamdi al-Najjar. Alaa was working as a pediatrician at the Nasser hospital when the strike hit her family, and Hamdi was injured in the attack, succumbing to his wounds a few days later. Alaa and her only surviving child, 11-year-old Adam, who was badly maimed, have since been evacuated to Italy for medical treatment.