PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – At least three people were killed, including two journalists and a police officer, when armed men fired on reporters gathered for the reopening of Haiti’s largest public hospital in downtown Port-au-Prince on Tuesday morning, according to two witnesses and the president of the country’s ruling Transitional Presidential Council.
The Health Ministry did not immediately respond to phone calls seeking comment, and a police spokesperson said he had no information about the shooting. But a local gang leader named Johnson (Izo) André of the Viv Ansanm (Living Together) gang coalition posted a video on social media claiming responsibility for the attack.
In a statement posted on social media, the prime minister’s office said, “This heinous act, which targets an institution dedicated to health and life, constitutes an unacceptable assault on the very foundations of our society.”
Jephte Bazil, a reporter with the online news outlet Machann Zen Haïti, said by phone outside a nearby hospital where the injured had been taken: “I’m still in shock – they shot at us. Some went down. They were hit by the bullets.”
As he spoke late Tuesday afternoon, the sound of gunfire could be heard in the background. “There is still shooting,” he said.
At least seven others were wounded, including another police officer, in the shooting Tuesday at State University of Haiti Hospital, known locally as the General Hospital. Video footage shared on social media showed bloodstained floors. Bodies could be seen lying motionless in a pool of blood, according to the videos, including one filmed from a drone.
Another video showed journalists taking cover as bullets ricocheted off a wall at the entrance to the hospital.
In a video statement, Leslie Voltaire, president of Haiti’s transitional presidential council, said that the shooting was “unacceptable” and added, “This act will not remain without consequences.”
General Hospital has been closed since March, when Haiti’s security crisis was reaching a breaking point and an alliance of armed gangs pressed the country’s prime minister at the time, Ariel Henry, to resign. Henry, who was out of the country, announced he would step down once a transitional council was established to pave the way for the election of a new president and to help restore stability.
The shootings Tuesday occurred barely two weeks after gang members were accused of executing 207 people in the impoverished neighborhood of Cité Soleil, not far from downtown Port-au-Prince, according to a United Nations report published Monday. The report found that a gang leader had ordered his men to round up residents and butcher them with machetes before burning their bodies and throwing them into the sea.
The U.N. Security Council issued a statement Monday condemning the gang killings and expressing its “deep concern” over the crisis in Haiti, where violence has spiraled out of control since President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in 2021.
According to the United Nations, more than 5,358 people have been killed and 2,155 others injured in gang-related violence this year, with a total of 17,000 casualties since the beginning of 2022. Kenya agreed to deploy hundreds of police officers as part of a multinational force to the Caribbean nation, but that has not appeared to curb the gang violence.
Hospitals, too, have been targeted. This week, millions of dollars of medical equipment was destroyed after armed gangs set on fire and ransacked Bernard Mevs Hospital in Port-au-Prince, doctors and Haitian officials said. It was the country’s only trauma center.
Haiti’s health care system is “on the brink” and “crippled by escalating violence,” said Dr. Oscar M. Barreneche, the U.N.’s Pan American Health Organization’s representative, according to a U.N. report republished in June.
The journalists shot Monday had been invited by government officials to attend the reopening at the hospital complex, which is in a former gang stronghold. They were awaiting the arrival of Haiti’s minister of public health, Dr. Duckenson Lorthe Blema, along with a bus organized by the government to carry more journalists to the site.
But gang members were also apparently lying in wait. And the minister never made it to the hospital.
Around 11 a.m., the witnesses said, the crowd was ambushed. A police officer returned fire and was killed, witnesses said.
“Some of us were at the entrance, and others were inside with the staff,” Bazil said. He was left splattered in blood, he said, after several journalists were hit, including one standing next to him. He said the bodies of two colleagues were dragged inside the building and others were hit by bullets inside the hospital.
Arnold Junior Pierre, a reporter with Radio Télé Galaxie who was inside charging his phone when the shooting began, said, “I heard the shots and I took cover.”
He and journalists from the Online Media Collective in Haiti identified one of the victims as Jimmy Jean, a reporter with the online TV outlet Moun Afe Bon.
“Jimmy was hit,” he said. “I saw him take the bullets and fall.”
The other slain victim was identified as Marckendy Natoux, who worked for the Voice of America in Haiti.
“It was a terrible experience,” Pierre said. “There are so many victims – they are all my friends.”
In 2022, two Haitian reporters were fatally shot and their bodies set on fire while reporting in a neighborhood controlled by gangs in the capital.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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