The medical charity Medical doctors With out Borders (MSF) has mentioned that no less than two of its sufferers had been killed after certainly one of its ambulances was stopped and attacked in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince.
MSF mentioned its workers members had been violently attacked on Monday after “members of a vigilante group and regulation enforcement officers” stopped the ambulance, which was transporting three younger individuals with gunshot wounds.
The ambulance was halted about 100 meters from the MSF hospital within the Drouillard space of the capital, when law enforcement officials tried to arrest the sufferers.
Police then diverted the ambulance to a public hospital, the place “regulation enforcement officers and members of a self-defence group surrounded the ambulance, slashed the tires, and teargassed MSF workers contained in the car to power them out”.
The wounded sufferers had been taken a brief distance away and no less than two had been executed, the group mentioned.
MSF mentioned its workers members had been “violently attacked, insulted, teargassed, threatened with dying, and held in opposition to their will for greater than 4 hours earlier than being allowed to depart”. The MSF ambulance was broken and put out of service within the assault.
“The act is a stunning show of violence and it significantly calls into query MSF’s capacity to proceed delivering important care to the Haitian individuals,” mentioned Christophe Garnier, MSF’s head of mission.
The MSF emergency clinic was final yr briefly compelled to shut after a severely wounded affected person suspected of being a gang member was dragged from an ambulance exterior, crushed and shot lifeless.
MSF is likely one of the final worldwide humanitarian help teams nonetheless working in Haiti, which has plunged deeper into turmoil for the reason that president, Jovenel Moïse, was murdered in his mansion in 2021.
Hundreds of individuals have died amid combating between safety forces, self-defence vigilante teams and a coalition of politically linked gangs known as Viv Ansanm (Residing Collectively).
The humanitarian disaster has been compounded by the truth that a number of clinics and hospitals have been compelled to shut due to the violence, together with the largest public hospital, the Common hospital.
The arrival of a Kenyan-led worldwide policing mission in June prompted a short lull within the bloodshed, however latest weeks have seen a renewed surge in violence because the closely armed gangs push on with an try to seize complete management of the nation’s capital.
America on Tuesday banned all civilian flights to Haiti for a month, a day after three jetliners approaching or departing from Port-au-Prince had been hit by gunfire.
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