# MSF suspends Gaza City work as Israeli offensive closes in on clinics
2025-09-26 - Médecins Sans Frontières has suspended its activities in Gaza City after saying the Israeli offensive has made it too dangerous to keep operating in the area.
MSF said its clinics in the north of the Strip were being squeezed by continued airstrikes and advancing tanks less than a kilometre from its healthcare facilities. The organization said the risk to staff and patients had become unacceptable and that it had been forced to stop lifesaving activities in Gaza City. It stressed, however, that it has not withdrawn from the Gaza Strip entirely and continues to work in southern areas.
The decision underscores how quickly the humanitarian space in Gaza City has narrowed. MSF described a setting in which many people remain trapped, unable to leave despite repeated evacuation orders, while others who do move south face the loss of homes, possessions and what the organization called rapidly collapsing living conditions. The group said access to safe drinking water, food, shelter and medical care is increasingly restricted.
The organization’s account also gives a sense of the scale of unmet medical need. It said its clinics in Gaza City carried out more than 3,640 consultations in the previous week and treated 1,655 people with malnutrition. It also treated trauma patients, burn victims, pregnant women and others who could not leave the city. That workload suggests the suspension will have immediate consequences for already strained health care access in the north.
MSF said it still hopes to support key services at Ministry of Health facilities, including Al-Helou and Al-Shifa hospitals, while those hospitals continue to function. But it said conditions for safe and sustained aid delivery are not in place. The group called for an immediate halt to the violence and for Israeli authorities to guarantee access and security for humanitarian organizations.
The broader picture is one of partial collapse rather than full evacuation. MSF continues to provide care in Khan Younis and the Middle Area, including support for Nasser hospital, Al-Aqsa hospital’s emergency department and wound care clinic, and several field hospitals in Deir Al-Balah. That means the organization is still present in Gaza, but its forced pause in Gaza City is a stark marker of the north’s deterioration.
For humanitarian workers, the suspension is more than an operational adjustment. It is a signal that the combination of bombardment, movement restrictions and insecurity has crossed a threshold where even emergency medicine cannot be sustained in parts of the city.
