Police say they have taken largest public hospital in Haiti back from gang control

Haitian police say they have retaken control of the country’s largest public hospital, more than four months after armed gangs launched coordinated attacks in Port-au-Prince and seized control of the area around the facility to use as part of an escape route.

Rameau Normil, the new head of the Haiti National Police, said Monday that police took control of the Hospital of the State University of Haiti, also known as the General Hospital, Sunday night.

In their effort to topple Haiti’s previous governments, armed groups have torched and looted more than 30 private and public health facilities in metropolitan Port-au-Prince since Feb. 29. The attacks plunged Haiti into a deeper humanitarian crisis as it left Haitians like Carole Dieujuste with few healthcare options. A heart-disease and diabetic patient, Dieujuste also has kidney disease and was forced to go weeks without dialysis.

She has faced one medical crisis after another over the last four months. After managing to get through a possible foot amputation thanks to the generosity of well-meaning Haitians, she now face an even bigger crisis after suffering a heart attack on Sunday. Her daughter, Nadjla Juste, said she now fears her mother will die because she lacks $300 to pay for oxygen at a private facility.

A video shared on X on July 5 by the online media outlet Tripotay Lakay showed the destruction at the General Hospital, where patients paid little for medical care. Its green-and-white building appeared to be vandalized, with furniture strewn on the ground and an electrical utility pole tossed sideways on one of the buildings. Armed groups had used the facility as an evacuation route to get to their nearby base after setting fire to at least a dozen pharmacies in the area and looting a nearby private Catholic hospital.

In the background of the General Hospital, a still-unfinished 534-bed replacement facility could be seen. The new building was financed by the United States and France after the 2010 earthquake and was hobbled by financing and contract disputes before the gang violence made its fate even more uncertain.

In a post on X, France’s ambassador to Haiti, Fabrice Mauriès, expressed his heartbreak over the images.

“My heart sinks at the sight of this video of the Port-au-Prince General Hospital construction site financed in particular by @AFD_France,” Mauriès said. “Years of work undoubtedly lost and the opening of the hospital further postponed after 4 months of anarchy. Shame and indignation.”

Normil said Monday in a joint press conference with Godfrey Otunge, the head of the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission, that they are working to restore security so that Haitians can freely move throughout the country. The mission, currently consisting of a small contingent of 200 specialized Kenyan police and support staff, arrived in Haiti on June 25.

The police chief said over the last 15 days police have been in “a period of evaluation and planning” over how to neutralize the gangs. He declined to go into details over how operations are being conducted with the Kenyan troops, citing strategic concerns. Such concerns have also been frequently cited by U.S. officials when asked about the extent to which the foreign security personnel will be involved in anti-gang operations with the Haitian police.

The presence of an armed international force in Haiti has raised hopes in Haiti, where gangs continue to wreak havoc. Last week, the National Haitian Police Union said two divisional police inspectors and a civilian were killed in southwest Port-au-Prince by armed bandits who later took away the police officers’ bodies. The incident happened in the Arcachon 32 neighborhood of Carrefour following a deadly attack on June 30 in Gressier, where more than two dozen people were killed and a police station was seized by bandits.

Normil did not address the Carrefour incident. Instead, he said that he mounted a task force to seize the Gressier police station and for the first time police seized a back loader the gangs regularly used to destroy buildings, particularly police stations.

He also has reinforced a number of police substations, Normil added, including a specialized base used by the border police unit.

Otunge said the job of the Kenyan officers is to restore peace throughout Haiti and “we intend to achieve this” by working closely with Haitian authorities, local police and the international community.

“There is no room for failure,” he said.

While the Kenyan police have been steadily increasing their presence on the streets of Port-au-Prince, they recently became the target of backlash when images and video were shared on line of some officers standing guard outside the U.S. Embassy.

In a social media post, the Cops Kenya X account called the images misleading. The account said the officers were escorting Otunge, the force commander, and MSS leadership as they paid a courtesy visit to the embassy.