Thousands of people are trapped without access to food, drinking water and medical care in an isolated part of the Haitian capital, Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) has said, as clashes between rival gangs in Port-au-Prince’s Cite-Soleil neighbourhood escalate.
In a statement, the humanitarian aid group said residents have been unable to leave an area in Cite-Soleil known as Brooklyn, while trucks that bring drinking water into the neighbourhood have been unable to enter.
Haitian protesters blocked roads in the downtown area of the capital on Thursday morning in anger over the lack of supplies.
Groups of motorcycle drivers blocked intersections and some were setting tyres on fire, witnesses told Reuters.
“The violence appears to be the result of a confrontation between the G9 and the GPEP gangs,” said a spokesman for the office of Prime Minister Ariel Henry.
The United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) also warned this week that hunger was set to worsen in Haiti as a result of the continuing gang violence.
More than one million people in the capital are already food insecure and deliveries of homegrown supplies such as bananas, cannot get there by road because the trucks are at risk of getting shot at or held up along the way, Jean-Martin Bauer, WFP’s Haiti country director, told reporters.
“Large parts of the population have been cut off from the economic heart of the country,” Bauer said in a statement on Tuesday. “We are seeing hunger rise significantly in the capital and south of the country, with Port-au-Prince being the hardest hit.”