Hundreds flee homes in Haiti amid new wave of gang violence | CBC News

A new wave of gang violence in Haiti has forced hundreds of people to flee their homes, leaving them scattered on Monday along a road leading to Haiti’s main airport.

Monique Verdieux, 56, fled to the highway after watching armed men burning houses in her neighbourhood. Her family scattered in different directions, and she said she’s not sure where they are.

“I am now sleeping in the street,” Verdieux said, noting it was unsafe to return.

The clashes between gangs erupted over the weekend across several northern neighbourhoods in the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, pushing the displaced onto a road leading to Toussaint Louverture International Airport.

WATCH | Haiti’s president slain in July 2021:

Haitian President Jovenel Moïse assassinated amid wave of political violence

Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated at his home by gunmen overnight, sending the country into a state of emergency. The acting prime minister has assumed control, but with his term soon to expire, there are questions over who has the right to govern.

Gangs have overtaken more than 90 per cent of Port-au-Prince since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021 at his home. Police say the gangs have expanded their activities — including looting, kidnapping, sexual assaults and rape — into the countryside.

Haiti has not had a president since the assassination.

Deteriorating security near airport

For the past two weeks, Haitian rum maker Barbancourt and two of the country’s largest bottlers have warned about deteriorating security conditions near Port-au-Prince’s international airport, where operations are now severely restricted.

In a statement released on Sunday, the companies said that the government’s response to the crisis has been “largely insufficient,” and noted that the poor state of the roads leading to the airport makes it difficult for Haitian security forces to patrol the area. The companies are among Haiti’s main fiscal contributors.

“You cannot secure an airport if you allow the roads around it to degrade,” the statement read.

Also on Monday, hospitals in the Port-au-Prince neighbourhood of Cité Soleil evacuated their patients, and aid group Doctors Without Borders suspended its activities there.

Doctors Without Borders, said hundreds of residents sought refuge in its hospital in the neighbourhood — an impoverished part of 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. Doctors Without Borders 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.

Doctors Without Borders 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.

Foreign troops

In April, the first foreign troops linked to a UN force arrived in Haiti to help quell ongoing violence.

The UN Security Council in late September approved a plan to authorize a 5,550-member force, which has not fully arrived in the island nation. An unknown number of troops from Chad have so far been deployed.

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 approximately 200,000 of them now living in crowded and underfunded sites in the country’s capital.