Haiti Hospital Evacuated Over Gang Violence As Kenya Fast Tracks Deployment of Police

A hospital in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, has been evacuated by police after nearby gang violence. 

This came as Kenya started the formal process of deploying more than 1,000 police officers to the country to help in combating the gangs.

Parliament is scheduled to discuss and ratify the process. A court stopped the process of deploying the police officers because Parliament had not approved it.

But officials aware of the developments said Thursday the House was ready to ratify the process anytime. The plans are to send the officers to Haiti by end of November 2023.

In Haiti, more than 100 patients – nearly half of them children – had to be removed from the Fontaine Hospital Center, according to its director Jose Ulysse.

The hospital is in the large shantytown of Cite Soleil, where there have been reports of unrest in recent days following the death of a gang leader.

Haiti is currently in the grip of unprecedented levels of lawlessness.

“There was a gang war, but the war is around the hospital,” Mr Ulysse told AFP news agency, clarifying an earlier report that gangs had entered the hospital and taken people hostage.

He said houses around the hospital had been set on fire and that while some people had been able to flee the facility on their own, others – including a woman who had given birth by Caesarean section a day earlier – needed the help of the local authorities.

“We were able to get everyone to safety,” Mr Ulysse added.

A source in Port-au-Prince told the BBC’s Mexico, Central America and Cuba Correspondent, Will Grant, that the situation at the hospital had “escalated very quickly”.

It came a day after powerful gang leader Iskar Andrice was killed in Cite Soleil – raising fears that there could be a further spike in violence in the area.

Gangs have taken increasing control of Port-au-Prince since the assassination of the country’s president in 2021 threw Haiti into a political crisis.

Thousands of Haitians have fled their homes in the capital, while more than 2,400 others have been killed, according to the latest figures from the UN.

Kenya’s move has been backed by the UN.

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