Hundreds of people fled new gang violence in Haiti’s capital over the weekend, and by Monday many were seeking safety along roads toward the country’s main airport, according to residents and aid groups. Monique Verdieux, 56, said she fled to the highway after watching armed men burn houses in her neighborhood and that her family scattered in different directions. She said she was “now sleeping in the street,” adding that it was unsafe to return.
The violence also forced humanitarian operations to pull back. In a statement released Monday, Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, said it evacuated its hospital in Cité Soleil after intense clashes in Port-au-Prince on Sunday. The organization said its teams treated more than 40 gunshot victims within 12 hours and provided temporary shelter to 800 people who were fleeing the fighting.
MSF said one injured patient was a security guard who was hit by a stray bullet on the hospital’s grounds. “We managed to evacuate him and his condition is now stable,” said Davina Hayles, MSF’s head of mission in Haiti. She added: “But it is unthinkable that our teams and civilians should become victims of these clashes.”
The renewed clashes come as gangs have consolidated control across much of Port-au-Prince. The AP report said gangs have overtaken more than 70% of the city since the assassination of President Jovenal Moïse in July 2021, and that the figure had been as high as 90% but later declined. Police have said their expanded activities now include looting, kidnapping, sexual assaults and rape, and the report said Haiti has not had a president since Moïse’s killing.
MSF’s evacuation and Verdieux’s account pointed to how quickly the violence can disrupt movement and services across neighborhoods. Over the past two weeks, Haitian rum maker Barbancourt and two of the nation’s largest bottlers also warned about deteriorating security conditions near Toussaint Louverture International Airport, where operations are now severely restricted. In a statement released Sunday, the companies said the government’s response has been “largely insufficient,” and they cited the state of roads leading to the airport as making it difficult for Haitian security forces to patrol the area.
“You cannot secure an airport if you allow the roads around it to degrade,” the companies said in their statement. The companies said they are among Haiti’s main fiscal contributors.
The report also placed the fighting in the context of foreign support for Haiti’s security efforts. In April, the first foreign troops linked to a United Nations force arrived in Haiti to help quell ongoing violence. The United Nations Security Council in late September approved a plan to authorize a force of 5,550 members, which the AP report said has not fully arrived, and it said an unknown number of troops from Chad have so far been deployed.
Separately, the AP report said a report published earlier this year by the International Organization for Migration found that gang violence has displaced more than 1.4 million people in Haiti, with about 200,000 of them living in crowded and underfunded sites in the capital.