(Port-au-Prince) Clashes between gangs continued on Friday in a huge neighborhood of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, causing civilian casualties and leading, according to Médecins sans Frontières, to the closure of a hospital.
The death earlier this week of a leader of the G9 gang coalition sparked a new cycle of violence in Cité Soleil, the country’s largest slum.
Since Monday, MSF has treated around fifty injured people in this neighborhood where “several hundred thousand” people live but where “the violence has drastically reduced the availability of medical care”, according to a press release from the NGO.
PHOTO RICHARD PIERRIN, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Exson holds his 6-year-old daughter, Francesca, injured during clashes between gangs on November 15 in a public square in Clercine, a suburb of Port-au-Prince.
According to Enock Joseph, a pastor in the area interviewed by AFP, the violence killed civilians and gang members.
“Thugs were killed in clashes with the police” on Thursday, and, “very upset” by these losses against the police, the “armed bandits attacked members of the civilian population in the evening on Thursday,” he said.
“They burned down several houses and executed local residents, including a 16-year-old girl whom they accused of being an informer for rival gangs,” added the pastor.
The emergency service run by MSF in Cité Soleil is “the only health establishment operating in the area after the recent closure of Fontaine hospital for an indefinite period”, noted the NGO on Friday.
Fontaine Hospital was completely evacuated on Wednesday after violent clashes between gangs broke out at its doors, according to its director.
PHOTO ODELYN JOSEPH, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Fontaine Hospital in Port-au-Prince
The small Caribbean state is plagued by violence from gangs who control 80% of the capital, with the number of serious crimes having reached records, according to the UN.
Faced with this never-ending security and humanitarian crisis, the UN Security Council gave its agreement in early October to send a multinational mission to Haiti led by Kenya to help the Haitian police. .
The Kenyan parliament approved this deployment on Thursday, which nevertheless remains pending a court decision in Nairobi.