Hospitals evacuated, MSF services halted as rival gangs clash in Haiti's capital

Hospitals in Haiti's Cite Soleil have evacuated their patients, and aid group MSF suspended its activities there on Monday as fighting between armed groups operating in the area that began a fortnight ago deteriorated over the weekend.

MSF, or Doctors Without Borders, said hundreds of residents sought refuge in its hospital in the neighbourhood, an impoverished part of the capital Port-au-Prince, where one of its security guards was shot by a stray bullet while inside the compound.

Another hospital in the area, Hopital Fontaine, told Reuters it evacuated newborns from its intensive care unit. MSF said it treated some patients who transferred from Fontaine, including pregnant women who gave birth overnight.

"Currently, not a single hospital is open in the area where the fighting is taking place," it said in a statement, adding that while local medical needs were growing exponentially, it could not protect its staff or patients in the midst of gunfire.

MSF said it had taken in more than 800 people who sought refuge, but as the situation worsened, it decided to suspend operations at the hospital until further notice.

"The gunfire has not stopped" since Sunday morning, it said.

Local business leaders had warned earlier that fighting in the area, near the capital's port and just a few miles from its international airport, broke out between the Chen Mechen gang and its partners and other gangs that were until recently allies.

The groups had all been part of a broad alliance of hundreds of armed gangs across the capital known as Viv Ansanm.

MASS DISPLACEMENTS

At the end of April, the UN estimated that fresh attacks by armed gangs had forced around 5,000 people to flee their homes in just two weeks around Cite Soleil and the Croix-des-Bouquets neighborhood to the north.

The UN also reported that some 4,400 were forced to leave their homes in Haiti's breadbasket, the Artibonite region, during the first few days of May.

Its last nationwide report estimated 1.45 million Haitians were internally displaced at the end of last year - many in makeshift camps or in the homes of friends or family. That represents about 12 per cent of the Caribbean nation's population.

The renewed violence comes after the last members of a Kenyan-led mission in Haiti left the country as part of a restructuring of a UN-backed force mandated to help restore security, one beset by delays, lack of funds, and lack of personnel. The mission also faced abuse accusations.

The new plan aims to deploy some 5,500 new troops in Haiti by the end of summer, but it is unclear where those troops will come from or who will fund their operations. Haiti's government has meanwhile hired a US private military company.

In an interview on Monday, Haiti's Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime said it was clear Haiti's insecurity would not allow for elections in August as planned. Haiti's last president was murdered in 2021, and it has not held elections since 2016.