MSF has suspended medical activities in Gaza City after a week in which armour moved to within roughly one kilometre of its clinics and airstrikes intensified. The organisation described an unacceptable level of risk for staff and patients and reported that clinics were encircled as fighting escalated inside the city.
The decision followed a heavy casualty day across the Strip reported by health officials, with scores killed amid renewed strikes as hospitals struggled to function under shortages of staff, supplies and fuel. Field images and testimonies from clinicians and aid groups depicted a system near collapse under bombardment and movement restrictions.
MSF said its teams conducted more than 3,600 consultations in Gaza City the previous week, despite the offensive, and treated over 1,600 cases of malnutrition before the suspension. An emergency coordinator said clinics were surrounded and that the most vulnerable, including newborns and critical patients, could not move. The group aims to keep supporting services in functioning facilities in central and southern areas when possible.
Swedish intensive care physician Märit Halmin, who worked in Gaza earlier this year, told Aftonbladet that the decision is understandable given tanks and bombardment near field hospitals and that civilians are now deprived of basic care. Her remarks reflect a view among front-line staff that risk to both patients and providers has surpassed acceptable thresholds.
Why This Matters For Africa
African diplomacy sits at the centre of legal and political efforts shaping the rules that protect health care in war. South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justice has driven provisional measures on humanitarian access and echoed the long-standing African Union position that attacks on civilians and obstruction of aid must stop. These moves influence negotiations over corridors and deconfliction that determine whether groups like MSF can operate.
African states also feature in broader recognition dynamics that affect leverage over ceasefire talks. A wave of recognition of Palestinian statehood by several Western partners has intersected with positions taken by Algeria, Egypt and others, reinforcing pressure for sustained access and accountability. That context helps explain why operational pauses by medical agencies become diplomatic inflexion points watched closely in African capitals.
There is also a practical African logistics angle. Cairo’s role and border control decisions shape the tempo of medical supply routes. At the same time, African humanitarian agencies and diaspora groups coordinate referrals for evacuation medicine and specialist care in North Africa. MSF’s recent analysis on supply chokepoints describes a system strained by blockade conditions, with predictable knock-on effects for trauma care, dialysis and neonatal services.
Patterns From Past MSF Theatres
MSF’s stance in Gaza City follows a pattern seen when medical sites become part of the battle space. The Kunduz trauma hospital was destroyed in 2015, with forty-two people killed during a U S airstrike, and operations were halted thereafter. In Syria during 2016, MSF recorded at least seventy-four attacks on thirty-four supported facilities, with a concentration in Aleppo during the second half of the year.
In Afghanistan in 2004, five MSF staff were murdered in Badghis Province, prompting a complete withdrawal at the time. MSF later ended its work at the Dasht e Barchi maternity ward after the 2020 attack on mothers and staff. The organisation’s history shows a consistent threshold for suspending care when assurances and access cannot be secured.
The risk environment for aid workers has worsened. The United Nations and partners recorded three hundred eighty-three aid workers killed worldwide in 2024, nearly half in Gaza. By mid-2025, the toll remained elevated with Gaza and Sudan prominent. These figures provide context for MSF’s suspension in Gaza City and the calls from African and global actors for stronger protection under international humanitarian law.
MSF’s 2025 internal review found that three staff members killed in Tigray in 2021 were intentionally targeted. Findings like these shape field protocols and negotiations in other theatres, including Gaza, where teams now weigh the proximity of armour to clinics and the probability of repeat strikes in deciding whether to remain or pause.
Comparisons highlight what is similar and what differs. Kunduz was a single catastrophic strike that destroyed a hospital in one night. At the same time, Gaza City has seen months of repeated hits across the health system and armour approaching clinics, which triggered a preventive suspension designed to avoid a mass casualty event. Syria showed how siege conditions and chokepoints degraded referral pathways in ways that echo Gaza’s access constraints today.
Within this pattern, the core MSF identity remains independence, neutrality, and impartiality. The group was founded in 1971 in France and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999 for pioneering humanitarian work. Those principles shape its decision to speak out when medical care is threatened and to suspend when the risk to patients and staff outweighs the ability to deliver safe care.
