The country’s security situation has deteriorated even further since Monday when at least three planes were shot at, forcing the closure of its main airport.
Haitian gang leaders took to social media last weekend and promised trouble.
They delivered.
“If you are reckless in the streets, you will pay the consequences, as of tomorrow,” Joseph Wilson, a gang leader known as Lanmou Sanjou, said Sunday in a widely circulated recorded message.
He spoke for Viv Ansanm — a coalition of gangs with the euphemistic moniker “Living Together” — that has sowed terror in Haiti for the past several months, and vowed that they would be “in the streets.”
Within 48 hours, at least three U.S. aircraft had been shot at, forcing the closure of Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, and stranding passengers all over the world.
The Federal Aviation Administration suspended all U.S. flights to Haiti for 30 days, and American Airlines said it wouldn’t return to the country until at least February. Even United Nations humanitarian flights were grounded.
The havoc was not limited to the airport: Dr. Deborah Pierre, a urologist, was shot and killed on Tuesday getting into her car in Port-au-Prince, and her father, a dentist, was wounded, her former boss in South Florida, Dr. Angelo Gousse, said.
Doctors Without Borders announced that its employees were pulled over by the police Monday and then tear-gassed by a vigilante mob. Wounded patients they were ferrying in an ambulance — suspected gang members — were killed.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
