The US Federal Aviation Administration has banned civilian flights into Haiti for 30 days after a jetliner was shot at on approach to Port-au-Prince.
Bullets hit the Spirit Airlines plane when it was about to land on Monday, injuring a flight attendant and forcing the airport to shut down.
The shooting was part of a wave of violence that erupted as the country plagued by gang violence swore in its new prime minister after a politically tumultuous process.
A UN spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, said the agency documented 20 armed clashes and more roadblocks affecting humanitarian operation during the violence on Monday.
The Port-au-Prince airport will remain closed until 18 November, and Dujarric said the UN will divert flights to the country’s second airport in the northern, more peaceful, city of Cap Haïtien.
Slashed access to the epicenter of the violence, Port-au-Prince, is likely to be devastating as gangs choking the life out of the capital have pushed Haiti to the brink of famine. Dujarric warned that cutting off flights would mean “limiting the flow of humanitarian aid and humanitarian personnel into the country”.
Already, a movement of 20 trucks filled with food and medical supplies in the south had been postponed and an operation providing cash assistance to a thousand people in the Carrefour area where violence broke out had to be canceled.
“We are doing all we can to ensure the continuation of operations amidst this challenging environment,” he said. “We call for an end to the escalating violence, to allow for safe, sustained and unimpeded humanitarian access.”
On Tuesday, life in much of Haiti’s capital was frozen after the wave of violence. Heavily armed police in armored cars outside the airport checked trucks used for public transportation passing by.
Schools were closed, as were banks and government offices. Streets, where just a day before gangs and police were locked in a fierce firefight, were eerily empty, with few driving by other than a motorcycle with a man who had been shot clinging to the back.
The sounds of heavy gunfire still echoed through the streets in the afternoon – a reminder that despite political maneuvering by Haiti’s elites and a strong push by the international community to restore peace, the country’s toxic slate of gangs kept its firm hold on much of the Caribbean nation.
Luis Abinader, president of the neighboring Dominican Republic, called firing on the airplane terrorism.
“This was a terrorist act; the countries that are following and helping Haiti should declare these armed gangs as terrorist groups,” Abinader said in a news conference.
The United Nations estimates that gangs control 85% of the capital, Port-au-Prince. A UN-backed mission led by Kenyan police to quell gang violence struggles with a lack of funding and personnel, prompting calls for a UN peacekeeping mission.
The violence comes after a transitional council, tasked with restoring democratic order to Haiti, which has not held elections since 2016, decided to fire the interim prime minister Garry Conille, who often was at odds with the council during his six months in office.
The council rapidly swore in the businessman Alix Didier Fils-Aimé as the new interim prime minister.
Source: theguardian.com
