The United States has said it was starting to evacuate its citizens out of Haiti by helicopter, amid reports of fresh fighting in the Caribbean country’s gang-dominated capital, with particularly fierce gunfire in some of the city’s wealthiest enclaves.
A state department spokesperson, Vedant Patel, told reporters on Wednesday that government-chartered aircraft were in the process of beginning to ferry evacuees from Port-au-Prince to the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.
“The violence on the ground in Port-au-Prince has been dire and the security situation is certainly one of high risk but we would not conduct such an operation if we did not feel it was safe to do so and we did not have the expertise,” Patel said.
Patel described the situation in Haiti’s capital – where heavily armed gang fighters launched an insurrection against the government on 29 February – as “very fluid”. Future evacuation flights would be considered on a day-to-day basis.
Nearly 1,600 US citizens in Haiti had approached the government about the security crisis, either seeking evacuation or advice on how to stay safe, Patel added.
As those evacuations began, journalists and witnesses reported renewed fighting in Haiti’s capital, which the Unicef chief, Catherine Russell, this week compared to “a scene out of Mad Max”.
“Heavy gunfire [echoed] across once-peaceful communities near the Haitian capital,” reported the Associated Press, whose reporters saw at least five bodies in and around the city’s suburbs.
Matt Knight, a British aid worker who is in Port-au-Prince, said: “[The shooting] has just been constant today … It has just been absolutely popping off … I can hear shots going now. It has just been all day: like constant pop-pop – all day.
“Sometimes it sounds like it is two streets away, sometimes it sounds like it is half a mile away. But it has just been constant … This is the worst day yet.”
Knight, who is the Haiti director for the Irish humanitarian aid agency Goal Global, said his organization had managed to restart its operations in one of Port-au-Prince’s deprived suburbs after the shooting subsided there. But in recent days the violence had shifted to some of the city’s most upscale areas, including Laboule, Thomassin and Pétion-Ville.
The residents of affected communities reportedly put in calls to local radio stations to plead for help from Haiti’s out-gunned police force, which has been struggling to prevent gangs seizing total control of the capital.
“Pétion-Ville is under heavy gunfire. Everything is paralyzed,” the Miami Herald Caribbean correspondent, Jacqueline Charles, tweeted on Wednesday afternoon.
As the fighting continued, intense, behind-the-scenes negotiations continued with an eye to setting up a transitional council that will be tasked with choosing an interim leadership to lead Haiti towards fresh elections.
Haiti has lacked a president since Jovenel Moïse, who took power in 2017, was assassinated in 2021. Its unpopular prime minister and acting president, Ariel Henry, has been locked out of his country by the gang uprising. Under pressure from the US and Caribbean leaders, Henry has committed to relinquishing power once the seven-member council is set up.
Patel told reporters on Wednesday: “Every day counts and our hope is that conversations are continuing with the membership of the transitional president council.”
The US believed Haitian negotiators representing different political factions and civil society representatives were very close to finalizing a deal. However, it is unclear whether the creation of such a council will bring calm to Port-au-Prince.
