315 children, adults take shelter at school to escape gang war in Haiti, #children #adults #shelter #school #escape #Haiti #gang #war Welcome to OLASMEDIA TV NEWSThis is what we have for you today:
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) – Hundreds of children and adults found shelter at a secondary school in Haiti’s capital on Saturday after fleeing shootings in a neighborhood where dozens have been killed and homes destroyed in recent weeks through fights between two rival gangs.
Francisco Seriphin, general coordinator of the religious community group Kizito, said 315 people had sought refuge at Saint-Louis de Gonzague school, in the Delmas district bordering the violence-ravaged Cite Soleil neighborhood.
Classes are out for the summer break and the high school classrooms have been converted into dormitories, where some teens, children and toddlers sleep on small mattresses provided by the nonprofit group. Others have to sleep on the floor without mattresses.
Young people chatted and joked in the schoolyard on Saturday, while others played football and basketball or skipping rope.
Seriphin said many of the children sheltered at school came without their parents. Some youths lined up to give information about fathers and mothers, some who are missing and others who prevented the gangs from leaving Cite Soleil.
“We need a lot of help,” said Jean Michelet, a 16-year-old who said he was injured the day the gang fighting broke out in early July.
“I was home the day the war started. It was a lot of shooting. A bullet went through the roof and hit me in the head,” he said.
He said a nun took him to a hospital to have the injury treated.
Michelet said many people had died in the firefights. “The situation is really bad,” he said.
A year after the unsolved assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, gang violence in Haiti has worsened and many people have tried to flee a country that appears to be in economic and social freefall. Attempts to form a coalition government have failed and efforts to hold general elections have stalled.
A week ago, the UN Humanitarian Office reported that 99 people had been killed in the fighting in Cite Soleil so far.
UN humanitarian agencies have said it is too dangerous for them to get help from people trapped nearby.
Jeremy Laurence, spokesman for the UN Human Rights Council, said most of the victims were “not directly involved in gangs”, but were targeted by them.
The UN agencies said some gangs are even refusing access to drinking water and food to keep the population in check, exacerbating malnutrition.