Over 20,000 displaced by gang violence in Haiti: UN agency

More than 20,000 people have been displaced across Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince in four days, a UN agency said Saturday, as residents flee gang violence that has crippled the troubled Caribbean nation.

“The isolation of Port-au-Prince is amplifying an already dire humanitarian situation,” said Gregoire Goodstein, Haiti chief for the International Organization for Migration.

“Our ability to deliver aid is stretched to its limits. Without immediate international support, the suffering will worsen exponentially,” Goodstein added in a statement.

The IOM said that around 17,000 of the roughly 20,000 people recently forced to relocate were already in temporary housing, with many having been displaced multiple times.

“Such a scale of displacement has not been observed since August 2023,” the migration agency said in a news release.

Haiti saw Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime sworn in on Monday, replacing outgoing premier Garry Conille, who was appointed in May but became embroiled in a power struggle with the country’s unelected transitional council.

Violent crime in Port-au-Prince remains high, with well-armed gangs that control some 80 percent of the city routinely targeting civilians, even though a Kenyan-led international force has been deployed to help the outgunned Haitian police restore order.

Gang-related violence has caused nearly 4,000 deaths this year, according to the UN human rights office.

Haiti lost major links to the rest of the world this past week when the United States banned all civilian flights to the country for a month, after three jetliners approaching or departing Port-au-Prince were hit by gunfire. (BSS/AFP)