GAZA CITY: Palestinian officials and witnesses said on Wednesday that an Israeli strike killed the director of the Indonesian Hospital, a key clinic in the north of war-ravaged Gaza.
Doctor Marwan Al-Sultan was killed in his apartment in Gaza City along with his wife, daughters and son-in-law, a relative who said he found them, Ahmed al-Sultan, told AFP.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said seven people were killed in the strike early Wednesday afternoon, including Sultan, his wife and at least three of his children.
The doctor’s body was taken to the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, where mourners gathered around it, AFP journalists reported.
“His face was unrecognisable, we could barely identify him,” the director of that facility, Mohammad Abu Salmiya, told AFP.
Surviving daughter Lubna Sultan paid tribute too her father at the hospital.
“His whole life was devoted to medicine and the struggle to treat patients,” she told AFP.
Gaza rescuers say at least 10 killed in Israel strikes
“There is no justification for targeting him and his martyrdom.”
The killing drew condemnation from Hamas and the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, where Israeli forces are battling to crush the Palestinian group.
“We strongly condemn this heinous crime against our medical personnel, and we ask Allah to grant him and his family mercy, after a long journey of service,” the ministry said.
The Israeli army told AFP: “The claim that as a result of the strike uninvolved civilians were harmed is being reviewed.”
It said it “struck a key terrorist from the Hamas terrorist organization in the area of Gaza City” on Wednesday.
The Medical Emergency Rescue Committee, the group that runs the hospital, called the killing of the doctor and his family “a flagrant violation of humanitarian principles and a grave act of injustice”, saying those responsible “must be held accountable”.
An Israeli military operation targeted the Indonesian Hospital in mid-May, when the Gaza health ministry said the facility’s electricity generators were deliberately destroyed.
American Dollar Exchange Rate