Skip to main content

    Haiti: Doctors Without Borders outraged by attack on its ambulance and execution of patients

    MSF flag

    On 11 November, a Doctors Without Borders ambulance transporting three young people with gunshot wounds was stopped by Haitian police about one hundred meters from the Doctors Without Borders hospital in the Drouillard area of Port-au-Prince and was forced to proceed with a transfer to a public hospital. After an attempt to arrest the patients and firing shots in the air, the police escorted the ambulance to Hôpital La Paix. Once there, law enforcement officers and members of a self-defense group surrounded the ambulance, slashed the tires, and tear-gassed Doctors Without Borders personnel inside the vehicle to force them out. They then took the wounded patients a short distance away, outside the hospital grounds, where at least two of them were executed.

    The Doctors Without Borders personnel in the ambulance were violently attacked, insulted, tear-gassed, threatened with death, and held against their will for more than four hours before being allowed to leave. The Doctors Without Borders ambulance was damaged and left unable to drive, so the team departed in a second vehicle.

    Categories