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A distraught woman is being assisted after gunmen fired up those attending the reopening of a hospital in Port-au-Prince. (Photo via CMC)
PORT AU PRINCE, CMC -The head of Haiti’s Presidential Transitional Council, (TPC), Leslie Voltaire, has vowed that the authorities will seek to bring to justice those responsible for the deaths of three people, including two journalists at the reopening of the country’s biggest public hospital on Tuesday.
“We express our sympathy to all the victims’ families, in particularly to the Haiti National Police and all the journalists’ associations,” Voltaire said, adding “we guarantee them that this act will not remain without consequences”.
Police spokesman Lionel Lazarre said that one officer was killed and Robest Dimanche, spokesman for the Online Media Collective, said journalists Markenzy Nathoux and Jimmy Jean were also killed during the attack as armed men opened fire at journalists, police and medical staff as people gathered for the reopening of the general hospital in the capital Port-au-Prince.
The site had been recaptured by Haiti’s government in July, after being occupied and destroyed by gangs.
The Viv Ansanm gang alliance, which controls much of the city, has said it carried out the attack and pictures posted on social media show several people injured or dead inside the building.
Journalists were waiting for the arrival of Health Minister Lorthe Blema when the shooting began.
“It felt like a terrible movie,” Dieugo André, a photojournalist who witnessed the violence, was quoted as saying by The Haitian Times.
“I have the blood of several injured journalists on my clothes.”
In an online video claiming the attack, the Viv Ansanm gang alliance said it had not authorised the reopening of the hospital, which they occupied and destroyed in March.
Haiti has been engulfed in a wave of gang violence since the assassination in 2021 of the then-president, Jovenel Moïse. An estimated 85 per cent of Port-au-Prince is still under gang control.
A new United Nations report says a little over two weeks after a surge of violence in the Cité Soleil commune of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince more than 207 people were executed by the Wharf Jérémie gang.
The report by the UN Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) covers the period between December 6 and 11, during which 134 men and 73 women were killed.
The UN said on Monday that most of the victims were elderly people accused of practicing voodoo and causing the gang leader’s child’s illness.
Other victims included those who tried to flee the area for fear of reprisals or were suspected of leaking information about the crimes to local media, the UN said.
