Haiti: Burned by armed groups, an important hospital out of service

Members of armed groups set fire to a major hospital in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, which is now out of service, during the night from Monday to Tuesday, AFP learned from a police source and a source close to this establishment. .

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 a whole symbol that went up in smoke,” lamented the same source, stressing that the impact of this attack on the medical supply in the capital will be considerable.

Context of growing insecurity

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.

184 dead at the beginning of December

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.

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