Haiti: Heavily Armed Haitian Gang Surrounds Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Traps People Inside
The hospital founder and director, Jose Ulysse, said the gangs were torching homes around the hospital and preventing people inside from leaving. He said it appeared that none of the gang members entered the hospital.
Port-Au-Prince, November 16: A heavily armed gang surrounded a hospital in Haiti, trapping women, children, and newborns inside until police rescued them, according to the director of the medical centre, who pleaded for help via social media. The Fontaine Hospital Center in the capital of Port-au-Prince is considered an oasis and a lifeline in a community overrun by gangs that have unleashed increasingly violent attacks against each other and residents. People who live in the capital's sprawling Cite Soleil slum are routinely raped, beaten and killed.
The hospital founder and director, Jose Ulysse, said the gangs were torching homes around the hospital and preventing people inside from leaving. He said it appeared that none of the gang members entered the hospital. Haiti Human Rights Group Warns Kidnappings and Killings Are on the Rise After Brief Respite.
Ulysse said members of Haiti's National Police force responded to his call for help and arrived with three armoured trucks to evacuate 40 children and 70 patients to a private home in a safer part of the city. Among those delicately evacuated were children on oxygen, he said. “Gangs are in total control of the area,” he said. A spokesman for the National Police did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Ulysse identified those responsible as members of the Brooklyn gang, led by Gabriel Jean-Pierre, best known as “Ti Gabriel.” Jean-Pierre is also the leader of a powerful gang alliance known as G-Pep, one of two rival coalitions in Haiti. The Brooklyn gang has some 200 members and controls certain communities within Cite Soleil, including Brooklyn. They are involved in extortion, hijacking of goods, and general violence, according to a recent United Nations report.
"The G-Pep coalition and its allies strongly reinforced cooperation and diversified their revenues, in particular by committing kidnapping for ransom, which has enabled them to strengthen their fighting capacity,” the report stated. US Shocker: Czech TV Crew Robbed at Gunpoint While Covering Apec Summit 2023 in San Francisco.
When the AP visited the Fontaine Hospital Center earlier this year, Ulysse said in an interview that gangs had targeted him personally twice. Gangs across Haiti have continued to grow more powerful since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, and the number of kidnappings and killings keeps rising. Earlier this year, at least 20 armed gang members burst into a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders and snatched a patient from an operating room. The criminals gained access after faking a life-threatening emergency, the organisation said.
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