(Port-au-Prince) Members of armed groups set fire to a major hospital in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, which is now out of service, AFP learned from police sources during the night from Monday to Tuesday. and sources close to this establishment.
Posted at 6:33 p.m.
According to the latter, the fire did not cause any casualties, but destroyed the four operating rooms, the laboratory, the two scanners and the administration offices of the Bernard Mevs hospital.
The attackers are gang members belonging to the “Viv ansanm” (“living together”) coalition who used Molotov cocktails to set fire to the establishment.
“It’s an entire symbol that has gone up in smoke,” lamented the same source, stressing that the impact of this attack on medical provision in the capital will be considerable.
This private establishment, known for having some of the most efficient medical imaging technologies in the country, plays a key role in the medical sector in Haiti, a poor Caribbean country facing endemic violence from armed gangs and political instability.
Thanks to a partnership with the state, police officers receive treatment there. The hospital welcomes medical students from all over the country and offers care to all categories of the population without distinction.
This fire occurs in a context of growing insecurity in Port-au-Prince, where gang attacks have taken place in several neighborhoods for more than a month.
PHOTO CLARENS SIFFROY, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A woman cries in front of her house after armed gangs set it on fire in the Post Marchand neighborhood of Port-au-Prince on December 17, 2024.
At the beginning of December, at least 184 people were killed during abuses ordered by a “powerful gang leader” against “practitioners of the voodoo cult”, according to the UN and a local NGO.
The arrival this summer of a multinational mission to support the Haitian police, led by Kenya and supported by the UN and the United States, did not make it possible to reduce the abuses of armed groups, accused of numerous murders, rapes, looting and kidnappings for ransom.
The latter also attack important buildings and notably caused the closure of the capital’s airport to commercial traffic in November.
