PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A new wave of gang violence tore through Haiti’s capital over the weekend, forcing hundreds of residents to abandon their homes and scattering families along the highway to the country’s main airport. The violence, which included intense clashes and the burning of houses, overwhelmed medical facilities and prompted the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) to evacuate its hospital in the Cité Soleil neighborhood on Monday.
Monique Verdieux, 56, fled to the roadside after watching armed men set fire to houses in her district. Her family scattered in different directions, and she said she does not know where they are.
“I am now sleeping in the street,” Verdieux said, adding that it was unsafe to return.
MSF said it treated more than 40 gunshot victims within 12 hours on Sunday while providing temporary shelter to 800 people fleeing the clashes. One of the injured was a security guard struck by a stray bullet on the hospital grounds. Davina Hayles, the organization’s head of mission in Haiti, said the guard was evacuated and is in stable condition.
“But it is unthinkable that our teams and civilians should become victims of these clashes,” Hayles said.
Gangs have seized control of roughly 70 percent of Port-au-Prince since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenal Moïse, a figure that authorities say has declined from earlier highs around 90 percent as police have expanded operations. Still, criminal groups have pushed into the countryside, carrying out looting, kidnappings, sexual assaults and rape, according to police.
The deteriorating security around Toussaint Louverture International Airport drew a rare public rebuke from some of Haiti’s largest businesses. In a statement Sunday, Barbancourt rum and two of the nation’s biggest bottlers described the government’s response to the crisis as “largely insufficient” and warned that crumbling roads around the airport make it nearly impossible for security forces to patrol the area.
“You cannot secure an airport if you allow the roads around it to degrade,” the companies said.
In April, the first contingent of a United Nations-authorized international force arrived in Haiti. The U.N. Security Council approved a 5,550-member mission in late September, but the full deployment has not yet materialized. An undisclosed number of troops from Chad have been deployed so far.
The International Organization for Migration reported earlier this year that gang violence has displaced more than 1.4 million people across Haiti, with approximately 200,000 of them now living in crowded and underfunded sites in the capital.