(Port-au-Prince) A hospital in the largest slum of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, was completely evacuated Wednesday after violent clashes between gangs broke out at its doors, its director announced ‘AFP.
Jose Ulysse, founder and director of the Fontaine Hospital Center, refuted reports that gang members entered the medical center and took patients hostage.
“There was no hostage-taking. There has been a gang war, but the war is taking place around the hospital. We had neighboring houses burned,” he explained in a telephone interview.
“All the health personnel took cover…and we had to call the police to come and help us evacuate all the people who could not move of their own accord, including women who had a C-section yesterday and couldn’t walk,” he continued.
Many patients fled the scene on their own, he said, and around “70 adults” and around “forty children”, including several newborns, were evacuated by police and ambulances. .
The small Caribbean state is plagued by gang violence which controls 80% of the capital, with the number of serious crimes having reached records, according to the UN representative in the country.
Cité Soleil, the country’s largest slum and a neighborhood controlled by gangs, has been plagued by armed clashes since Monday after the death of a suspected gang leader.
According to an AFP correspondent, agents from the elite unit of the Haitian national police intervened in the neighborhood on Wednesday to allow the evacuation of the hospital.
“We were able to shelter everyone,” said Mr. Ulysse, who explained that the patients were transferred to the “heights of the slum” in a “private structure”.