The medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has said that at least two of its patients were killed after one of its ambulances was stopped and attacked in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince.
MSF said its staff members were violently attacked on Monday after “members of a vigilante group and law enforcement officers” stopped the ambulance, which was transporting three young people with gunshot wounds.
The ambulance was halted about 100 meters from the MSF hospital in the Drouillard area of the capital, when police officers attempted to arrest the patients.
Police then diverted the ambulance to a public hospital, where “law enforcement officers and members of a self-defence group surrounded the ambulance, slashed the tires, and teargassed MSF staff inside the vehicle to force them out”.
The wounded patients were taken a short distance away and at least two were executed, the group said.
MSF said its staff members were “violently attacked, insulted, teargassed, threatened with death, and held against their will for more than four hours before being allowed to leave”. The MSF ambulance was damaged and put out of service in the attack.
“The act is a shocking display of violence and it seriously calls into question MSF’s ability to continue delivering essential care to the Haitian people,” said Christophe Garnier, MSF’s head of mission.
The MSF emergency clinic was last year briefly forced to close after a severely wounded patient suspected of being a gang member was dragged from an ambulance outside, beaten and shot dead.
MSF is one of the last international humanitarian aid groups still operating in Haiti, which has plunged deeper into turmoil since the president, Jovenel Moïse, was murdered in his mansion in 2021.
Thousands of people have died amid fighting between security forces, self-defence vigilante groups and a coalition of politically connected gangs called Viv Ansanm (Living Together).
The humanitarian crisis has been compounded by the fact that several clinics and hospitals have been forced to close because of the violence, including the biggest public hospital, the General hospital.
The arrival of a Kenyan-led international policing mission in June prompted a brief lull in the bloodshed, but recent weeks have seen a renewed surge in violence as the heavily armed gangs push on with an attempt to seize total control of the country’s capital.
The United States on Tuesday banned all civilian flights to Haiti for a month, a day after three jetliners approaching or departing from Port-au-Prince were hit by gunfire.
