PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (CMC) – Haiti’s government has provided shelter and assistance to several hundred slum dwellers fleeing gang violence which has already left several dozen people killed in over one month.
Interior Minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aime said Tuesday the state-run civil protection office, the Social Affairs department, and the national committee of the Red Cross were coordinating efforts to assist some 300 people fleeing gang violence in the capital Port-au-Prince.
“We are providing mattresses, water, two meals a day and toilet utilities for about 300 people,” Bien-Aime said.
“This is a serious matter and the government is seriously considering ways to end this situation,” he said.
Those fleeing violence took refuge in a school, run by Haiti’s Baptist Evangelical Union, turning it into a makeshift refugee camp.
Several dozen of the fleeing residents, considered more vulnerable, were moved from the Maranatha school to a government-run retirement home in the capital, according to government officials.
“We have taken in 40 of them at the city retirement home, including a pregnant lady who had her baby there,” said Bien-Aime.
The 263 remaining were still sheltered at the Maranatha school located a few miles from the violence scene.
Authorities said the conflict between heavily armed gangs in Martissant does not seem to be politically motivated. Gangs have long been fighting to control the area.
The 9,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force deployed some 2,000 troops in the capital’s metropolitan area alone to try to quell armed groups that have been stirring violence over the past two months.
The presence, however, of U.N. peacekeepers in Martissant and surrounding slums does not seem to deter armed gangs from terrorizing the civilian population.