Dr. Marwan Sultan was taking a rare break from work to be home with his family Wednesday when, at 2:15 p.m., he became a grim statistic: the 70th health care worker to be killed by Israeli fire in the past 50 days, according to a Palestinian monitoring group.
Soon after at Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, an NBC News crew witnessed grieving family members and colleagues surround the body of Sultan, a renowned cardiologist, who was killed along with his wife, daughter, son-in-law and sister.
In the morgue, hospital workers wiped blood off Sultan's ashen and scratched face as his body lay wrapped in a smeared white sheet. Visitors embraced and kissed him, their wails reverberating around the room, according to the video.
“My father was just a doctor, just a human caring for patients,” one of Sultan’s surviving children, Ahmad, said as his voice trembled.
Ahmad, 17, told NBC News that his family was taking shelter in an apartment in Gaza with five other displaced families when the Israeli bomb hit. Later, he wept in the arms of a relative.
Sultan was the director of Indonesian Hospital, one of the largest medical facilities in northern Gaza, where he had been treating the sick and wounded since the war in the Gaza Strip broke out in October 2023.
“He was a rare doctor,” Dr. Munir Bursh, the director general of the Health Ministry, told NBC News between tears. “A man of deep expertise and an even deeper conscience. We didn’t just lose a doctor — we lost a man who was a lifeline to so many.”
Healthcare Workers Watch, an organization that monitors and verifies attacks against Palestinian health care workers, said that Sultan was the 70th worker to be killed in Israeli airstrikes in the past 50 days.
It added that Sultan, an associate professor at Islamic University in Gaza, was one of the two remaining heart specialists in the besieged enclave.
The United Nations estimates that more than 1,400 health care workers have died in the war.
Bursh was seen embracing his fellow physician, Dr. Mohammad Abu Salmiya, the director of Al-Shifa Hospital, as they both wept over Sultan's body.
The Israeli military told NBC News that it had targeted a “key terrorist” from Hamas in the Gaza City area and was reviewing reports of the incident involving Sultan.
It added that it regretted any harm caused to “uninvolved individuals” and was taking steps to mitigate such harm.
The Palestinian Health Ministry praised Sultan's “long career of giving in the fields of medicine and compassion, during which he was a symbol of dedication, steadfastness, and sincerity during the most difficult circumstances.”
Referring to Sultan's death, it also accused the Israeli forces of a wider pattern of killings and detentions of Gaza’s doctors, which it said included Dr. Ahmed Al-Kahlout and Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya from Kamal Adwan Hospital, who have been held in Israeli detention for more than 500 days.
The Israeli military has repeatedly stated that medical facilities in Gaza are being used as operating bases for Hamas, places to store weapons and as spaces for operatives to hide among the civilian population sheltering in them, an accusation that health officials in the enclave deny. It did not respond when asked if it was targeting doctors in their homes.
Family and friends were still mourning Sultan’s death when Israeli airstrikes over the past day killed 130 Palestinians, including 25 who died while waiting for aid at distribution sites, according to Dr. Marwan al-Hams, the director of Gaza’s field hospitals.
Health officials say more than 56,000 people have been killed in the enclave since Israel launched its military offensive in response to the Hamas-led terrorist attack in which 1,200 people were killed and over 250 taken hostage.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, in a separate statement Wednesday, said that it was “deeply alarmed” by the deaths caused by the “intensifying hostilities” in Gaza over the past three days.
The attacks come as “Gaza’s already-decimated healthcare system struggles to absorb a relentless surge in critical cases,” the ICRC said, adding that nearly all of Gaza’s public hospitals had been shut down or gutted by repeated attacks and restrictions on the flow of medical aid by Israeli authorities.
“The ICRC urgently reiterates its call for the protection of medical personnel and medical facilities in Gaza,” it said, adding, “They must be respected and protected to safeguard a lifeline for the wounded and sick.”
