Two patients in ambulance killed by vigilantes, police in Haiti, aid group says

Two patients traveling in a Doctors Without Borders ambulance were killed after an attack by a vigilante group and police in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Monday, according to a statement from the international humanitarian aid group.

The killings occurred after the ambulance, which was transporting three wounded patients and Doctors Without Borders staff, was stopped by police just short of arriving to a hospital overseen by the aid group. The aid group, which provides medical assistance to people in conflict zones around the world, is also known as Médecins Sans Frontiers.

Police initially attempted to arrest the patients, all “young people with gunshot wounds,” per the aid group’s statement. Eventually, the police escorted the ambulance to a different hospital. There, law enforcement officers and vigilantes “surrounded the ambulance, slashed the tires, and tear-gassed MSF personnel inside the vehicle to force them out,” the statement said. “They then took the wounded patients a short distance away, outside the hospital grounds, where at least two of them were executed.”

Aid group workers in the ambulance were attacked, threatened and held captive for more than four hours, Doctors Without Borders said.

The vigilante brigade that attacked the ambulance is part of a growing trend across Haiti that has seen so-called self-defense groups mobilize in response to armed gangs. Gang violence has surged in the country since the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in 2021. An estimated 600,000 Haitians have been displaced since then, with thousands others fleeing the country.

The United Nations estimates that about 85 percent of the Haitian capital is controlled by gangs that are responsible for kidnappings, extortion and drug trafficking, according to a recent U.N. report. The gangs recruit children into their ranks. “Serious violations of human rights persist on a large scale with total impunity,” according to the report.

“With the high number of fatalities and increasing areas under the control of armed gangs, insecurity in the country has reached levels comparable to countries in armed conflict,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said in an earlier report.

The Federal Aviation Administration halted flights bound from the United States to Haiti this week after three different U.S. airliners came under fire while attempting to land in Port-au-Prince on Monday, part of an effort by gangs to block travel from the capital city, according to the U.S. Embassy.

In September, another critically injured Doctors Without Borders patient died after an ambulance was stopped and detained by police.

The aid group called on “authorities and all stakeholders to uphold the right to access medical care without discrimination or hindrance, and to ensure the protection of patients, as well as respect for medical personnel and healthcare facilities in the face of increasing violence,” in a statement Wednesday.

“This act is a shocking display of violence, both for the patients and for MSF medical personnel,” said Christophe Garnier, MSF head of mission. “It seriously calls into question MSF’s ability to continue delivering essential care to the Haitian people, which is in dire need.”